The Singularity - by Balsam Karam (Paperback)

About the Book

"The Singularity is the English-language debut from a Swedish writer of Kurdish descent. This formally innovative novel explores motherhood, grief, and displacement through the intertwining stories of two women: the mother of a refugee family who throws herself into the sea after her daughter goes missing, and a woman who witnesses her suicide and later gives birth to a stillborn baby"--

Book Synopsis

Lyrical and devastating, The Singularity is a breathtaking study of grief, migration, and motherhood from one of Sweden's most exciting new novelists.

In an unnamed coastal city filled with refugees, the mother of a displaced family calls out her daughter's name as she wanders the cliffside road where the child once worked. The mother searches and searches until, spent from grief, she throws herself into the sea, leaving her other children behind. Bearing witness to the suicide is another woman--on a business trip, with a swollen belly that later gives birth to a stillborn baby. In the wake of her pain, the second woman remembers other losses--of a language, a country, an identity--when once, her family fled a distant war.

Balsam Karam weaves between both narratives in this formally ambitious novel and offers a fresh approach to language and aesthetic as she decenters a white European gaze. Her English-language debut, The Singularity is a powerful exploration of loss, history, and memory--an experience akin to "drinking directly from a flood of tears" (Aftonbladet).

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

"The Singularity by Balsam Karam is a novel about loss and longing--a mother who misses her child, children who miss their mother, and all of those who miss their country as they try to feel the new earth in their new land. A deeply moving work of fiction from a true voice of Scandinavia." --Shahrnush Parsipur, author of Women Without Men: A Novel of Modern Iran

"Balsam Karam writes at the limits of narrative, limning the boundary of loss where 'no space remains between bodies in the singularity.' With a lucid intimacy, Karam braids a story of witness and motherhood that fractures from within only to rebuild memory and home on its own terms. The Singularity is a book of conviction, where those who have been made to disappear find light and keep their secrets too." --Shazia Hafiz Ramji, author of Port of Being

"Lyrical, devastating, and completely original, The Singularity is a work of extraordinary vision and heart. Balsam Karam's writing is formally inventive and stylistically breathtaking, and Saskia Vogel's translation does shining justice to its poetic precision and depths." --Preti Taneja, author of Aftermath

"Balsam Karam's new novel is enormously powerful. . . . To read The Singularity is like drinking directly from a flood of tears." --Aftonbladet (Sweden)

"A novel that appears to have been created from dark matter, elusive, giddying and with an enormous linguistic and narrative density." --Expressen (Sweden)

"Balsam Karam's language is entirely her own. It is poetic and suggestive. Sometimes like one big stream-of-consciousness, where two different scenarios are portrayed in parallel. To be here and now and at the same time in the past. To carry one's losses, engraved on one's body like deep wounds. Because who can rank traumas, as the novel suggests. The loss of a child, a language, a country, an identity. . . . The Singularity is a journey into a black hole. A point of no return." --Jönköpings-Posten (Sweden)

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. The Singularity was shortlisted for the August Prize and is her second novel, published in Sweden in 2021.

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. She worked on The Singularity as part of her translation residency at Princeton University. From Los Angeles, she now lives in Berlin.