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LONGLISTED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZEAre we free to create our own destinies or are we just part of a system beyond our control? A joyful family saga about free will, forgiveness, and how we are all interconnected.In October 1989, a set of triplets is born, and it is this moment their father chooses to reveal his affair. Pandemonium ensues.
Over two decades later, Sebastian is recruited to join a mysterious organisation, the London Institute of Cognitive Science, where he meets Laura Kadinsky, a patient whose inability to see the world in three dimensions is not the only thing about her that intrigues him. Meanwhile, Clara has travelled to Easter Island to join a doomsday cult, and the third triplet, Matilda, is in Sweden, trying to escape from the colour blue.
Then something happens that forces the triplets to reunite. Their mother calls with worrying news: their father has gone missing and she has something to tell them, a twenty-five-year secret that will change all their lives ¿
'Hilarious' CLAIRE LOMBARDO
'Playfully experimental' THE GUARDIAN
'Magnificent' THE TELEGRAPH
About the author
Amanda Svensson grew up in Malmö. She studied creative writing and has translated books by Ali Smith, Tessa Hadley, and Kristen Roupenian. A System So Magnificent It Is Blinding was awarded the Per Olov Enquist Literary Prize and the Svenska Dagbladet Literature Prize. It is shortlisted for Tidningen Vi’s Literature Prize.
Nichola Smalley is a translator of Swedish and Norwegian literature. Her translation of Andrzej Tichý’s novel Wretchedness won the 2021 Oxford-Weidenfeld Prize, and was longlisted for the International Booker Prize and shortlisted for the Bernard Shaw Prize that same year. She lives in London.
Summary
LONGLISTED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE
Are we free to create our own destinies or are we just part of a system beyond our control?
A joyful family saga about free will, forgiveness, and how we are all interconnected.
In October 1989, a set of triplets is born, and it is this moment their father chooses to reveal his affair. Pandemonium ensues.
Over two decades later, Sebastian is recruited to join a mysterious organisation, the London Institute of Cognitive Science, where he meets Laura Kadinsky, a patient whose inability to see the world in three dimensions is not the only thing about her that intrigues him. Meanwhile, Clara has travelled to Easter Island to join a doomsday cult, and the third triplet, Matilda, is in Sweden, trying to escape from the colour blue.
Then something happens that forces the triplets to reunite. Their mother calls with worrying news: their father has gone missing and she has something to tell them, a twenty-five-year secret that will change all their lives …
'Hilarious' CLAIRE LOMBARDO
'Playfully experimental' THE GUARDIAN
'Magnificent' THE TELEGRAPH
