The importance of language and naming things is a central theme, with all objects requiring labelling in order to maintain the very fabric of reality. Straight away, there's this feeling behind everything that something is not quite right. Vanja is assigned a household through a lottery, which is where she meets Nina, as well as two other housemates called Ivar and Ulla. The story opens on a train, with government worker Vanja travelling to the colony of Amatka to do some consumer research on hygiene products. On the back of the Vintage paperback, Matt Bell praises the author's imagination as being "fiercely strange", which I think is a fitting description of the whole book. I found it an extremely atmospheric novel- the greyness, the loneliness, the constant sense of wrongness about everything. Pair this with the ambiguous ending and I can easily see why some readers might feel dissatisfied. It's a quiet, odd, unsettling dystopian novel - my first from Swedish author Karin Tidbeck - that opens up more questions than it answers. Shipping may be from our UK warehouse or from our Australian or US warehouses, depending on stock availability.So I thought this was excellent but I'm not sure how widely I'd recommend it.
Amatka is a beguiling and wholly original novel about freedom, love, and artistic creation by a captivating new voice. In Karin Tidbeck's world, everyone is suspect, no one is safe, and nothing-not even language, nor the very fabric of reality-can be taken for granted. But when she stumbles on evidence of a growing threat to the colony, and a cover-up by its administration, she embarks on an investigation that puts her at tremendous risk. Intending to stay just a short while, Vanja falls in love with her housemate, Nina, and prolongs her visit. Immediately she feels that something strange is going on: people act oddly in Amatka, and citizens are monitored for signs of subversion. Vanja, an information assistant, is sent from her home city of Essre to the austere, wintry colony of Amatka with an assignment to collect intelligence for the government.
A LOCUS AWARD FINALIST ONE OF THE GUARDIAN'S BEST SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY BOOKS OF 2017 A surreal debut novel set in a world shaped by language in the tradition of Margaret Atwood and Ursula K.
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