The Sorrows of an American

FROM THE INTERNATIONALLY BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF WHAT I LOVED’Astonishing . . .
almost certainly the best American novel you will read this year’ Sunday Telegraph’One of the most profound and absorbing books I’ve read in a long time’ Washington Post’Wonderful . . .
you have to read it to believe it’ ObserverAfter their father’s funeral, Erik and Inga Davidsen find a cryptic letter from an unknown woman among his papers, dating from his adolescence in rural Minnesota during the Depression. Returning to his psychiatric practice in New York, Erik sets about reading his father’s memoir, hoping to discover the man he never fully understood. At the same time, another woman enters Erik’s lonely, divorced life – a beautiful Jamaican who moves into his garden flat with her small daughter.
As Erik gets drawn into the cat-and-mouse tactics of someone who appears to be stalking her, he finds out that his sister Inga is also being threatened, by a journalist in possession of a wounding secret from her past. A multi-layered novel that probes the mysteries of the heart and mind, The Sorrows of an American is compulsive, thought-provoking and profoundly affecting. ‘Almost impossible to put down, and even harder not to re-read’ Independent’Beautifully thought through, deeply serious and enormously intelligent’ GuardianPRAISE FOR SIRI HUSTVEDT: ‘Hustvedt is that rare artist, a writer of high intelligence, profound sensuality and a less easily definable capacity for which the only word I can find is wisdom’ Salman Rushdie ‘One of our finest novelists’ Oliver Sacks ‘Reading a Hustvedt novel is like consuming the best of David Lynch’ Financial Times ‘Few contemporary writers are as satisfying and stimulating to read as Siri Hustvedt’ Washington Post