We are delighted to see that one of our winter highlights , Joel Mauricio Isabel Ortiz’s Devotion, has been so lauded by the Swedish critics.
Svenska Dagbladet describes it as a deeply moving story about how new wounds tear open old ones and how the person who needs security the most, is the easiest pray to the greatest of dangers, while Helsingborgs Dagblad makes the following conclusion: I especially appreciate how Joel Mauricio Isabel Ortiz allows his main characters to unfold slowly, with room for nuance and complexity. It is both a heavy and tender portrait of two human lives colliding.
But Dagens Nyheter’s review probably sums it up best: “Devotion” ends up being a surprisingly finely-tuned novel about addiction, faltering historiography and the nuances of queer life – but it’s also a pandemic novel. Markers such as masks, isolation and restrictions at art galleries can sometimes be experienced as dated scenography, but that is not the effect here. Questions about disease, distance and who is actually allowed to get close are very close to the core of this novel, and belong there.