Augustprize nominee 2012

Jury motivation:

"The summer guests’ appearance in the coastal landscape of Halland and the meeting between the farmer's daughter and the city girl in a wild friendship beyond parental control and class boundaries, is the memory around which Cilla Naumann’s novel Running with Oars circles. Over the years the summer dream fades off and the reality of the class society emerges. What remains is a single mother with a different child and a harsh reality to deal with. Running with Oars is a psychologically insightful and skillfully composed novel which alters between past and present in a motion that drives towards its inevitable end."

— Come here, Monika, Johanna says, and pulls me down on the gravel.
It's quiet around us, unusually calm this first day. The sea is like a violet blue mirror below the farm. Nothing but Johanna has happened, yet everything has changed. She lies on her back beside the bike in the dusty gravel with her pale legs and dirty underwear. Beside her is the bottle of thick red raspberry juice. In so many ways, everything is as usual. Except for the fact that Johanna is in my front yard.

Running With Oars is about the summer guest Johanna and the peasant girl Monika and how their summers become a playground with consequences that extend far into the future – for their own children who unwittingly provokes their mothers charged and fateful class conflict.

Cilla Naumann has done something unique with her new novel Running With Oars. She gives a new perspective on the destinies of a group of people in a small society, people that she has given life to in her youth novel 62 days, in which the children’s and youngster’s perspective characterizes the story about a fateful summer. In Running With Oars we get the adults' perspective and also their prehistory that definitely affects what later on happens in 62 days. The books could of course be read as standalones but in her ingenious approach Cilla Naumann gives the reader a double possibility to view what actually happened. More voices can be heard.

Reviews

"Naumann has the ability to take the breath out of their people - and it is meant only positive. Anxiety and disgust for others, for oneself, for ones children, fore the breast’s tenderness and thighs enlargement when pregnancy strikes. She also possesses an ability to see the people and everything that belongs to them: those who died are still there in everyday life, taking part in the swimmingtour - they are always there."
UNT

"In Running with Oars Cilla Naumann cleverly recreates the feeling of strong moments in one's life and how theese moments sometimes appear even clearer than the present. With a balanced language Cilla Naumann deftly turns between the different times and emotions, and once again shows her excellent feeling for the human psychology."
Svenska Dagbladet

"A myriad of psychological nuances, subtle distortions and unspoken hints. Reading Cilla Naumann when she is like this at her best is to have your emotions antennas so loaded that it almost becomes painful."
Dagens Nyheter

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The objective of Support scheme for Swedish literature in translation is to make it possible for more Swedish quality literature to be published abroad. The support scheme applies both to fiction for children and adults and to non-fiction. (LINK)

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W sprawie materiałów recenzenckich prosimy o kontakt mailowy z Justyną Czechowską pod adresem justyna@literatura.com.pl