Ullmann will arrive in Budapest on Monday to present the book, which has been published by Scolar Kiadó in Hungary. Scolar Kiadó also published another of Ullmann?s novels, ?Before You Sleep?, in 2000, two years after it appeared in Norwegian.
In ?Grace?, Ullmann?s third and most successful novel, she examines the triangle of life, love and death. For the novel?s protagonist, Johan, the love he has for his wife, Mai, literally becomes a question of life and death.
When Johan finds he is terminally ill, he asks his wife to help him take his life when the time comes. But, as the moment draws closer, Johan wavers. And the question is raised: Who should decide when the time has arrived? Johan or his wife? Is Mai?s love for husband expressed as her promise to help him die a source of grace?
Ullmann, born in Oslo in 1966, received her undergraduate and graduate degrees in literature from the University of New York. In 1990, she returned to Oslo, where she quickly established herself as a newspaper writer. Today, she has her own literary review column in Norway?s leading daily. Her novels, which have been published in more than 30 countries, have also won her acclaim at home and abroad.
In the New York Times Review of Books, the author Bruce Bawer calls ?Grace? ?a delicate, haunting portrait of a fainthearted man trying his best to meet the end of life -- and love -- with a modicum of dignity and, yes, grace.?
In The Independent, Paul Binding writes that ?Grace? is an ?exemplary account of an unremarkable but unique man's journey to the moment of death and beyond.?
?Ullmann describes and follows the path of a half-hearted, no-good example of his species, an everyman. But he achieves greatness for the first time in that his errors and weaknesses are forgiven,? writes Peter Henning in Die Zeit.
