Sami Problem

An incisive novel illuminating a young mothers reckoning with her own identity and Smi lineage through the lives and struggles of her ancestors

As a freelance journalist living in France, Marie Engmo has traveled far and wide to write about languages and local cultures threatened with extinction. But when she returns home to Norway for her hkkus (grandmothers) funeral, she recognizes how far she has strayed from her own sense of self and her Smi identity. Kathrine Nedrejords acclaimed novelwinner of Norways national book awardis the lucid and compelling story of Maries emotional search through her familys past for a history and legacy that she might bequeath to her own infant daughter.

In spare and elegant prose, Nedrejord illuminates a young womans fierce and clear-eyed reckoning with the sacrifice and oppression that has marked the women and men in her family and generations of Indigenous Smi communities in the northern reaches of Norway. As Marie awakens to the lengths her mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother traversed to survive discrimination and displacement, she uncovers and embodies their strength and dignity that are herand her daughtersinheritance. What emerges is an unflinching examination of belonging to a minority that can never dominate, that will always have to negotiate and compromise its place in the world. As stirring as it is troubling, The Smi Problem is itself an awakening and a literary triumph.

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