NORSTEDTs ageNcy

Fiction
Det vita huset i Simpang
The White House in Simpang
by Hanna Nordenhök
August 2013, 197 pages
Senior Editor: Håkan Bravinger
The White House in Simpang
“I write to open the black book, over and over.
There is no return from it. The book is like forgetfulness,
a blank and impenetrable lake, a water
grave.”
Hanna Nordenhök’s novel takes place in two
very different places, and time signals the
breaks. In Stockholm Kerstin, who suffers
from dementia, sinks deeper and deeper into
herself while getting regular visits from her
daughter, who one day finds a black notebook
in her belongings.
For the younger woman the black book becomes
a road back in time, to a past that
mostly takes place in Indonesia in the 1930s,
in what was then the Dutch East Indies.
With the help of the notebook she can tell
the story of what really happened in the
white house in Simpang. There is Pa who
is drawn to his sugar plantation like a fly to
light. There are the four ominous butterflies:
Zus, the lad, Moeder and the young nanny
Roos. There is the garden that opens up like
a strange flower with thick, mysterious petals.
Using material and setting from her own family
history with ties to Indonesia, Hanna
Nordenhök writes Det vita huset i Simpang, a
hypnotic but also violent tale about intimacy
and power relations and about the legacy of
a dark colonial past. The story of Swedish colonialism
and women’s roles in the East Indies
project here intertwine with questions
about the power of storytelling and writing,
and also with the consequences when children
are forced to interpret the adult world
through a key hole.
Press voices:
“In her new book she gives free reign to the
language of poetry. It has a both suggestively
attractive and a repelling beauty – Nordenhök
has a rare sense of language.”
Östgöta Correspondenten
continued >
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