I should not have gone back to the island but did it all the same.

After many years away, Andreas returns to his childhood home on a small island off the Norwegian coast. He is there to sort through the belongings of his late foster father in their decaying old house, the Yellow Villa. But he soon finds himself overwhelmed with unexpected memories, and begins to uncover not only the shadowy history of the island, but the mysterious truth about his family's past ...

Rich in shimmering echoes from Shakespeare's play, Steve Sem-Sandberg's The Tempest is a hypnotic portrayal of the inherited guilt that seeps through generations, haunting an island overgrown with myths.

Winner of the Prix Medicis Etranger The Am Spiegelgrund clinic, in glittering Vienna, masqueraded as a reform school for wayward boys and girls and a home for chronically ill children. The reality however, was very different. Through the eyes of a child inmate, and a nurse, Steve Sem-Sandberg explores the very meaning of survival. This extraordinary novel offers invaluable and compelling insight on an intolerable chapter of Austria's past.

After many years away, Andreas returns to his childhood home: a small island off the Norwegian coast where he grew up with his sister Minna. Their foster father Johannes has just died, and he must sort through their decaying old house, the Yellow Villa.

As he settles back into rural life, Andreas begins to question the shadowy history of the island itself. Owned by Jan-Heinz Kaufmann, who had been a minister in the wartime government, the island has been a summer colony for deprived evacuee children from occupied Oslo. But decades later, Kaufmann remains an elusive figure, and the ultimate purpose of his wartime refuge - and his relationship to Andreas and Minna after their parents' sudden disappearance - remains mysterious.

A reimagining of Buechner's classic play Woyzeck, the tale of jealousy, love turned to hate, and murder and its consequences propels this internationally acclaimed novelThe novel W. is a literary prequel to one of modern literature's touchstone texts, the play Woyzeck-the basis of films, operas, and numerous translations and adaptations. Considered the first modern drama, Woyzeck tells the story of a loyal foot soldier who, in a fit of jealous rage, kills the woman he loves. In 1836 this true story inspired Georg Buechner to write the play, unfinished at his death at just 23 years old. W., the astonishing new novel by August Prize-winning author Steve Sem-Sandberg, grippingly recounts the lovers' relationship, the murder case, and the solder's execution, while digging deeper into the world and motivations of the characters.Taking this classic and enduring work as his starting point, in poetic and controlled prose, Sem-Sandberg reveals a ruthless, moving, and unforgettable story of human vulnerability and the abyss that Buechner felt was a part of every person. Larger forces such as the horrors of war and the dehumanizing nature of psychiatry collide with the soldier's own small world, and love devolves into hatred as Woyzeck desperately and humanly struggles to make something of the life given to him.