Event Horizon
Milde is a young woman from the Outskirts, a place beyond the mountains, a place where mothers and daughters make their living banished from society. Here they live without rights and under difficult circumstances. Milde refuses to accept the order of things and she is only seventeen when she, together with some friends, throw Molotov cocktails at the urban planning office in the city. It is believed that she is the instigator behind the riot.
She is arrested, imprisoned, tortured and eventually presented with a final choice: to face execution in the city or to be sent into space, into a black hole, into the Mass, as part of a research project. Milde chooses space – and eternity.
Event Horizon is a deeply existential and poignant – but also political – novel about oppression, exile, solidarity, trauma and loss. With a completely unique voice Balsam Karam writes about a hopelessness that never resigns, about a young woman’s firm belief in a better world and her refusal to be repressed.
SHORTLISTED FOR THE KATAPULT PRIZE 2019
Balsam Karam, b. 1983, is of Kurdish ancestry and has lived in Sweden since she was a child. She is an author and librarian and made her literary debut in 2018 with the critically acclaimed Event Horizon, which attracted a lot of attention and was later shortlisted for the Katapult Prize. The Singularity is her second novel.
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Poland: Marpress, Spain: Ediciones Temas de Hoy, UK: Fitzcarraldo Editions, USA: Feminist PressMilde is a young woman from the Outskirts, a place beyond the mountains, a place where mothers and daughters make their living banished from society. Here they live without rights and under difficult circumstances. Milde refuses to accept the order of things and she is only seventeen when she, together with some friends, throw Molotov cocktails at the urban planning office in the city. It is believed that she is the instigator behind the riot.
She is arrested, imprisoned, tortured and eventually presented with a final choice: to face execution in the city or to be sent into space, into a black hole, into the Mass, as part of a research project. Milde chooses space – and eternity.
Event Horizon is a deeply existential and poignant – but also political – novel about oppression, exile, solidarity, trauma and loss. With a completely unique voice Balsam Karam writes about a hopelessness that never resigns, about a young woman’s firm belief in a better world and her refusal to be repressed.
SHORTLISTED FOR THE KATAPULT PRIZE 2019
Reviews
“Event Horizon” is a remarkable, enchanting debut novel, poetically phrased like Scripture verses with repetitions and vivid images.Arbetarbladet
Do not think that “Event Horizon” is merely a resentfully confrontational novel of outrage with a short life span. Here lies a poetic element that promotes one of the fateful questions of our time to a higher and more universal level.Dagens Nyheter
“Event Horizon” is a dreamlike, existential novel that does not allow the bourgeois hegemony to dictate the language for reality.Göteborgs-Posten
Balsam Karam’s debut ”Event Horizon” is an earth-shattering read
Balsam Karam’s debut ”Event Horizon” is an earth-shattering read. Through her poetic and alluringly beautiful prose she highlights sisterhood and motherhood, but also deportation, oppression, depravity, revolt, insurgency and torture. The novel has a powerful moral and political tone, indignant and rebellious.
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