If Only – first published in Norway in 2001, and now brought into English by Charlotte Barslund – is viewed in Norway as Vigdis Hjorth’s masterpiece, a story of the devastation wreaked on one woman’s life by an ill-advised affair. Hjorth (whose other novels in English include Is Mother Dead?, Will and Testament and Long Live the Post Horn!) is in conversation about the novel with Lauren Oyler, whose own debut novel, Fake Accounts, was published in 2021, and whose essay collection No Judgement came out earlier this year.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.