Event Horizon - by Balsam Karam (Paperback)

About the Book

"A novel about seventeen-year-old Milde, who has grown up in the Outskirts, a place beyond the mountains where the dirt is corpse-rich, where mothers and daughters make their living banished from society-without rights, access to care, or legal status. When Milde rebels by throwing Molotov cocktails at the urban planning office in the city, she is arrested, imprisoned, tortured, and eventually presented with a final choice: to be executed publicly or to be launched into space, into a black hole called the Mass, for an experiment. Milde chooses the Mass"-- Provided by publisher.

Book Synopsis

From the author of The Singularity, a saga of one girl's resistance and exile in the stars and soil of empire.

Seventeen-year-old Milde is from the Outskirts, a place beyond the mountains where the dirt is corpse-rich and mothers and daughters make their living banished from society--without rights, access to care, or legal status. Simmering under the surface of their day-to-day survival is a desire for change--and one day, Milde and her friends act on it, setting fire to government buildings in the city that has rejected them.

When Milde is framed as the instigator of the uprising, she is arrested, imprisoned, tortured, and eventually presented with a final choice: to be executed publicly or to be launched into space, into a black hole called the Mass, for an experiment. Milde chooses the Mass.

Event Horizon is an exquisite existential novel, dark as deep space, woven with reflection on oppression, solidarity, trauma, and loss. With a completely unique voice, Balsam Karam writes about the swirl of hope and despair in the lives of the marginalized and a young woman's unwavering belief in a better world.

Review Quotes

Praise for Event Horizon

"An exceptional speculative novel." --Foreword Reviews, starred review

"If you ever wonder why fiction matters, read this radiant and defiant book. Nothing confronts the realities of our world more powerfully than a story willing to imagine and extrapolate them so fully. That this vision is readable--bearable, even--is only because it is written with such love, care, and formal brilliance in both voice and structure." --Samantha Harvey, author of Orbital

"Balsam Karam's Event Horizon is a parable for our times. With the power of myth and the lyricism of an epic poem, the novel grapples with so much of what we are witnessing around us across the globe: oppression, torture, migration, division, and humans having to negotiate impossible bargains. This philosophical and existential novel had me gripped from beginning to end. Karam's voice--urgent and essential--penetrates deep and will stay with me." --Joanna Pocock, author of Greyhound

Praise for The Singularity

"A beautiful and harrowing English-language debut... This is powerful." --Publishers Weekly, starred review

"Astringent, fuguelike. . . . A knotty, sui generis evocation of mothers' feelings of fear and loss." --Kirkus Reviews

"Mesmerizing and harrowing, The Singularity is a novel of personal and cultural loss and anguished remembrance." --Foreword Reviews

"Two narratives refract and then come together in a poetic convergence... there is a haunting, hushed tone to the novel, neatly evoked by Saskia Vogel's translation from the Swedish, that probes the disorienting effects of exile." --The New York Times

"This understated, hypnotic novel hummed in my blood." --Hudson Review

"Transformative... Karam's writing is sharp, piercing, and full of chasms." --Words Without Borders

"The Singularity is a sweeping look at the generational grief of migration, narrated in a poetic rhythm that moves like an elegy." --Asian Review of Books

"I don't know anyone who writes like Balsam Karam. She blows me away. Truly one of the most original and extraordinary voices to come out of Scandinavia in. . . forever. You'll realize twenty minutes after you've finished The Singularity that you're still sitting there, holding on to it." --Fredrik Backman, author of A Man Called Ove

About the Author

Balsam Karam (b. 1983) is of Kurdish ancestry and has lived in Sweden since she was a young child. She is an author, librarian, and university lecturer, and made her literary debut in 2018 with the critically acclaimed Event Horizon, which was shortlisted for the Katapult Prize. Her second novel, The Singularity, was published in Sweden in 2021 and was shortlisted for the August Prize.

Saskia Vogel is the author of Permission and the translator of over twenty Swedish-language books. She was awarded the Berlin Senate Endowment for Non-German Literature and was a finalist for the PEN Translation Prize. From Los Angeles, she now lives in Berlin.