Event Horizon - by Balsam Karam (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

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

Seventeen-year-old Milde is from 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. But Milde refuses to accept the order of things, so one day, together with some friends, she throws Molotov cocktails at the urban planning office in the city.

When Milde is framed as the instigator of the riot, 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--opting to face its fathomless depth and loneliness rather than hurt the morale of her weary allies back home.

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 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.