Reviews

• “Bragi, who has mastered all narrative speeds, produces image after image you can’t turn away from. /…/ Yes, Steinar Bragi knows how to portray violence against women and how to treat revenge and its mechanisms. /…/ Along the way there are some brilliant narrative techniques, and he has a wondrous talent for turning laughter into the companion of despair. This magnificent story is, as it might very well be described in Bragi’s universe, the color of a bone unable to heal.”

• “The atmosphere of the novel is like Twin Peaks on acid. /…/ If you’ve abandoned what is invaluable you cannot go on unscathed, neither as an individual nor a society. Kata exacts a punishment on society for its sacrifice of so many women. An eye for an eye, like in an old Icelandic tale. It’s an insane self-sacrifice. Or salvation, because she doesn’t do it alone, around her is the female collective that is both a promise and a threat. Kata is a novel you’ll read with some disorientation and misgiving, you’ll lose your sense of proportion and order. And that vertigo is the message of the novel. Welcome into the unfunhouse – this is where we live.”

• “You can clearly sense that behind Kata’s voice there’s an author with strong convictions. An author that happily also has the ability to make a thought-provoking novel out of them.”

• “Steinar Bragi’s novel is a kind of parallell to Stieg Larsson’s sociocritical crime fiction.”

• “Steinar Bragi goes all the way […] – there are no compromises, no mercy is given in the relentless realism and insight into the mind of a person who’s experienced a disastrous injustice that permanently changes her life. Kata urges us to confront reality in its ugliest form. An unconventional and cruel novel about violence against women that raises a question that the reader might find difficult to face.”

• “A powerful novel that pursues a series of social critiques and takes the reader on a journey which spares no one and nothing.”

• “One gets a sense of the raw solitude of the character and how the world feels utterly lost, it’s all described very well. /…/ [Steinar Bragi] takes this issue, sexual violence against women, and makes it the focal point in all ways, so that one is forced to think about it and to take a stand. /…/ This is a truly powerful book!”

• “Steinar Bragi has written an extraordinary novel. /…/ An awesome story of great power, driven by a formidable frenzy. /…/ It’s the combination of such powerful, complex narrative styles and having so much told to us about a subject he [Steinar Bragi] thinks is a matter of great importance, and wants to change, that propels this book forward.”