Victoria Redel – författare

A mesmerising historical novel, I Am You is a meditation on gender, an ode to artistic creation, and an unforgettable love story that reimagines the life of renowned painter Maria van Oosterwijck during the Dutch Golden Age."Spellbinding, wonderfully atmospheric, and impossible to forget" Sarah Jessica Parker"With echoes of Yael van der Wouden’s The Safekeep, I am You is earthy and fleshy and pulsates with suppressed emotions of rage, envy and desire." Elizabeth FremantleAt eight years old, Gerta Pieters is forced to disguise herself as a boy and sent to work for a genteel family. When their daughter Maria sees through Gerta’s ruse, she insists Gerta accompany her to Amsterdam and help her enter the elite, male-dominated art world.While Maria rises in the ranks of society as a painting prodigy, Gerta makes herself invaluable in every way: confidante, muse, lover. But as Gerta steps into her own talents, their relationship fractures into a complex web of obsession and rivalry, until the secrets they keep threaten to unravel everything.

A PRIMA BEST READ OF 2017'At once tough and tender, funny and sad, this beautifully written novel articulates the dynamic realities of those wondrous friendships that last a lifetime.' Siri HustvedtAnna, Molly, Ming, Caroline, Helen: the Old Friends.Since adopting their official name aged eleven, they have seen each other through careers, children, illnesses, marriage, divorce, addiction, fame, fall outs.But now, Anna - fiercely loved mother and friend, and the Old Friends' glue - is diagnosed with cancer again, and this time, tired of recoveries and relapses, pitying looks and exhausting regimes, she simply says: no more.As her health declines, the politics of the still lived-in world merge with memories of the past while each Old Friend tries to accept the truth of what is happening: they are losing someone they cannot imagine life without.Before Everything is a celebration of friendship and love between a group of wonderful women. End of sixth grade they made it their official name. It was a joke one afternoon but they liked the way it sounded. Permanent. The Old Friends. This way, the five girls agree, it's just a fact. And ours forever.

What does it mean to be a woman—a lover, mother and artist? In Swoon, Redel tackles the question of Eros as it animates domestic life. These are poems unafraid to embrace the sweetness of difficulty and the difficult sweetness of intimacy. Using short and extended lyric, prose poem, circular narrative, Redel refuses formal categorization, demanding of poetry a complex and textured vision of the female experience. Swoon is a robustly sexy, intelligent, daring book of poems.