Rachel Cusk – författare

En ask fylld med vänskap: det här är berättelser om lojalitet och om att dela allt. Om svikna löften och kärlek, omtanke och besvikelse. Noveller skrivna av fyra stora, samtida författare - att ge till dig själv, eller till din bästa vän.

Asken innehåller fyra böcker:

Sara Stridsberg - Vi var rovdjur

Rachel Cusk - Det är så man gör

Lisa Taddeo - Suburban Weekend

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie - Apollo

Sikt är bokserien som samlar smarta texter från hela världen. I fyra nummer per år skriver framstående författare, forskare, historiker, tänkare och ekonomer. Syftet är att lyfta fram nya, tänkvärda och banbrytande perspektiv.

I det här numret publicerar vi två av samtidens allra mest lysande författare: Jonas Hassen Khemiri och Rachel Cusk. Andrew Ross Sorkin gräver i den amerikanska börskraschen 1929, Kristina Sandberg skriver en personlig essä om sin pappa och så introducerar Johan Norberg Nobelpristagarna i ekonomi. 

Dessutom återvänder Per Andersson till Jan Stenbeck, Clara Popenoe Thor begrundar det svenska tillståndet och så listar vi seklets 25 bästa svenska fackböcker (hittills). 

Välkommen till det femte numret av Sikt. 

Hyllad och älskad både av kritiker och läsare. Nu kommer Rachel Cusks trilogi, som inleddes med Konturer och följdes av Transit och Kudos, i en samlingsvolym. Den hör till vår tids stora litterära bedrifter.

Faye åker till Aten för att undervisa. Under några infernaliskt varma sommardagar möter hon en rad individer som alla gör henne till åhörare medan de berättar om sina liv. En efter en redogör de för sina äktenskap, familjerelationer, drömmar, misslyckanden och farhågor, och gradvis träder även Fayes utsatthet fram. Konturer är en roman som består av samtal: om skapande och självutplåning, separation och förluster – om att ana existensen i mötet med andras berättelser.

I Rachel Cusks verk blir lyssnandet ett slags berättande, och Konturer växer till en unik studie av hur berättelser styr våra liv. Romanen ingår, med de efterföljande delarna Transit och Kudos, i en trilogi som världen över hälsats som en förnyelse av romankonsten.

”Formmässig briljans, språklig precision och existentiell utsatthet – allt är mästerligt balanserat i Rachel Cusks verk.” Linn Ullmann

”De bästa berättelserna är de som får dig att känna dig både nöjd och omskakad – det var längde sedan jag läste en så ovanlig, häpnadsväckande originell och oroande roman.” The Observer

"…inget mindre än ett mästerverk." GP

"Är det stor litteratur? Ja, tveklöst. Är det krävande? Ja, men väl värt att ta sig igenom, eftersom behållningen är enorm." Borås Tidning

Mitt i livet börjar en konstnär att måla bilder som är upp och ner. En del bilder föreställer hans fru i ett ofördelaktigt ljus. Tavlorna blir en stor succé. Så inleds Parad, som i fyra sammanlänkade berättelser visar upp en rad människoöden som alla befinner sig i påtaglig förvandling. Genomgående möter vi konstnärer – alla med initialen G – som av olika skäl måste vända ut och in på vedertagna sanningar om identitet, familj och kön. Med mångbottnade Parad fortsätter Rachel Cusk, en av vår tids mest betydande författare, att undersöka hur en historia kan berättas och hur våra liv formas av de historier vi skapar om oss själva.

Precis som efterbörd i överförd bemärkelse kan betyda efterdyningar efter ett stort skeende kan efterskörd betyda en andra välkommen slåtter, frukterna av en eftersådd.

Med Konturer, Transit och Kudos byggde Rachel Cusk en uppmärksammad romantrilogi där huvudpersonen Faye försökte återskapa sitt liv efter en skilsmässa. Trilogin föregicks av memoaren Efterbörd, som väckte stor debatt när den kom ut 2012 och som förebådar det banbrytande romanprojektet. I Efterbörd filtreras skilsmässan genom Cusks exakta och osentimentala språk, där sanningen aldrig offras för fiktionens försköning. ”Ett mästerverk”, skrev Malin Ullgren i DN.

Multi-award-winning author Rachel Cusk’s honest memoir that captures the life-changing wonders of motherhood. Selected by The New York Times as one of the 50 Best Memoirs of the Past 50 Years“Funny and smart and refreshingly akin to a war diary—sort of Apocalypse Baby Now . . . A Life’s Work is wholly original and unabashedly true.” —The New York Times Book ReviewA Life’s Work: On Becoming a Mother is Rachel Cusk’s funny, moving, brutally honest account of her early experiences of motherhood. When it was published it 2001, it divided critics and readers. One famous columnist wrote a piece demanding that Cusk’s children be taken into care, saying she was unfit to look after them, and Oprah Winfrey invited her on the show to defend herself. An education in babies, books, breast-feeding, toddler groups, broken nights, bad advice and never being alone, it is a landmark work, which has provoked acclaim and outrage in equal measure.

En kvinna bjuder in en berömd konstnär att vistas i hennes gäststuga, belägen i det isolerade träskområdet vid kusten. Men under den heta sommaren blir hans närvaro allt mer provocerande för värdinnan, som tvingas revidera sina tankar om inte bara konstnären utan också om konstens och människans villkor. Andra stället är ett rakbladsvasst kammarspel om kön och öde, makt och konst; en strålande återkomst till romanen för Rachel Cusk, efter den hyllade trilogi som inleddes med Konturer.

A haunting fable of art, family, and fate from the author of the Outline trilogy.A woman invites a famous artist to use her guesthouse in the remote coastal landscape where she lives with her family. Powerfully drawn to his paintings, she believes his vision might penetrate the mystery at the center of her life. But as a long, dry summer sets in, his provocative presence itself becomes an enigma—and disrupts the calm of her secluded household.Second Place, Rachel Cusk’s electrifying new novel, is a study of female fate and male privilege, the geometries of human relationships, and the moral questions that animate our lives. It reminds us of art’s capacity to uplift—and to destroy.

Winner of the Goldsmiths PrizeNamed a Best Book of the Year (So Far) by The New Yorker and VultureFrom Rachel Cusk, author of the Outline trilogy, comes this startling, exhilarating novel that once again expands the notion of what fiction can be and do.Midway through his life, the artist G begins to paint upside down. Eventually, he paints his wife upside down. He also makes her ugly. The paintings are a great success.In Paris, a woman is attacked by a stranger in the street. Her attacker flees, but not before turning around to contemplate her victim, like an artist stepping back from a canvas.At the age of twenty-two, the painter G leaves home for a new life in another country, far from the disapproval of her parents. Her paintings attract the disapproval of the man she later marries. When a mother dies, her children confront her legacy: the stories she told, the roles she assigned to them, the ways she withheld her love. Her death is a kind of freedom.Parade is a novel that demolishes the conventions of storytelling. It surges past the limits of identity, character, and plot to tell the story of G, an artist whose life contains many lives. Rachel Cusk is a writer and visionary like no other, who turns language upside down to show us our world as it really is.

Winner of the Goldsmiths PrizeNamed a Best Book of the Year (So Far) by The New Yorker and VultureFrom Rachel Cusk, author of the Outline trilogy, comes this startling, exhilarating novel that once again expands the notion of what fiction can be and do.Midway through his life, the artist G begins to paint upside down. Eventually, he paints his wife upside down. He also makes her ugly. The paintings are a great success.In Paris, a woman is attacked by a stranger in the street. Her attacker flees, but not before turning around to contemplate her victim, like an artist stepping back from a canvas.At the age of twenty-two, the painter G leaves home for a new life in another country, far from the disapproval of her parents. Her paintings attract the disapproval of the man she later marries. When a mother dies, her children confront her legacy: the stories she told, the roles she assigned to them, the ways she withheld her love. Her death is a kind of freedom.Parade is a novel that demolishes the conventions of storytelling. It surges past the limits of identity, character, and plot to tell the story of G, an artist whose life contains many lives. Rachel Cusk is a writer and visionary like no other, who turns language upside down to show us our world as it really is.

A Finalist for the Folio Prize, the Goldsmiths Prize, the Scotiabank Giller Prize, and the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction. One of The New York Times'' Top Ten Books of the Year. Named a A New York Times Book Review Notable Book and a Best Book of the Year by The New Yorker, Vogue, NPR, The Guardian, The Independent, Glamour, and The Globe and Mail A luminous, powerful novel that establishes Rachel Cusk as one of the finest writers in the English language A man and a woman are seated next to each other on a plane. They get to talking—about their destination, their careers, their families. Grievances are aired, family tragedies discussed, marriages and divorces analyzed. An intimacy is established as two strangers contrast their own fictions about their lives.Rachel Cusk''s Outline is a novel in ten conversations. Spare and stark, it follows a novelist teaching a course in creative writing during one oppressively hot summer in Athens. She leads her students in storytelling exercises. She meets other visiting writers for dinner and discourse. She goes swimming in the Ionian Sea with her neighbor from the plane. The people she encounters speak volubly about themselves: their fantasies, anxieties, pet theories, regrets, and longings. And through these disclosures, a portrait of the narrator is drawn by contrast, a portrait of a woman learning to face a great loss. Outline takes a hard look at the things that are hardest to speak about. It brilliantly captures conversations, investigates people''s motivations for storytelling, and questions their ability to ever do so honestly or unselfishly. In doing so it bares the deepest impulses behind the craft of fiction writing. This is Rachel Cusk''s finest work yet, and one of the most startling, brilliant, original novels of recent years.

National Bestseller • A Finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize • A Finalist for the Goldsmiths Prize • Longlisted for the International DUBLIN Literary Award • One of Time Magazine''s Top 10 Fiction Books of the YearA New York Times Book Review Notable Book • Named a Best Book of the Year by Time, The Guardian, BOMB Magazine, San Francisco Chronicle, Commonweal, Southern Living, NOW Magazine, The Washington Independent Review of Books, Book Depository, The Globe and Mail, and The National Post (Canada)The stunning second novel of a trilogy that began with Outline, one of The New York Times Book Review’s ten best books of 2015In the wake of her family’s collapse, a writer and her two young sons move to London. The process of this upheaval is the catalyst for a number of transitions—personal, moral, artistic, and practical—as she endeavors to construct a new reality for herself and her children. In the city, she is made to confront aspects of living that she has, until now, avoided, and to consider questions of vulnerability and power, death and renewal, in what becomes her struggle to reattach herself to, and believe in, life.Filtered through the impersonal gaze of its keenly intelligent protagonist, Transit sees Rachel Cusk delve deeper into the themes first raised in her critically acclaimed novel Outline and offers up a penetrating and moving reflection on childhood and fate, the value of suffering, the moral problems of personal responsibility, and the mystery of change.In this second book of a precise, short, yet epic cycle, Cusk describes the most elemental experiences, the liminal qualities of life. She captures with unsettling restraint and honesty the longing to both inhabit and flee one’s life, and the wrenching ambivalence animating our desire to feel real.

New York Times 100 Notable Books of 2018 • Amazon Editors'' Top 100 of 2018 Rachel Cusk, the award-winning and critically acclaimed author of Outline and Transit, completes the transcendent literary trilogy with Kudos, a novel of unsettling power.A woman writer visits a Europe in flux, where questions of personal and political identity are rising to the surface and the trauma of change is opening up new possibilities of loss and renewal. Within the rituals of literary culture, Faye finds the human story in disarray amid differing attitudes toward the public performance of the creative persona. She begins to identify among the people she meets a tension between truth and representation, a fissure that accrues great dramatic force as Kudos reaches a profound and beautiful climax. In this conclusion to her groundbreaking trilogy, Cusk unflinchingly explores the nature of family and art, justice and love, and the ultimate value of suffering. She is without question one of our most important living writers.

NPR''s Favorite Books of 2019Rachel Cusk redrew the boundaries of fiction with the Outline Trilogy, three “literary masterpieces” (The Washington Post) whose narrator, Faye, perceives the world with a glinting, unsparing intelligence while remaining opaque to the reader. Lauded for the precision of her prose and the quality of her insight, Cusk is a writer of uncommon brilliance. Now, in Coventry, she gathers a selection of her nonfiction writings that both offers new insights on the themes at the heart of her fiction and forges a startling critical voice on some of our most urgent personal, social, and artistic questions.Coventry encompasses memoir, cultural criticism, and writing about literature, with pieces on family life, gender, and politics, and on D. H. Lawrence, Françoise Sagan, and Kazuo Ishiguro. Named for an essay Cusk published in Granta (“Every so often, for offences actual or hypothetical, my mother and father stop speaking to me. There’s a funny phrase for this phenomenon in England: it’s called being sent to Coventry”), this collection is pure Cusk and essential reading for our age: fearless, unrepentantly erudite, and dazzling to behold.