‘When someone leaves, existence splits into a before and an after.’ Lydia Sandgren’s epic, multigenerational saga explores both these existences within the Berg family in a novel that won Sweden’s August Prize in 2020 before going on to sell more than 100,000 copies in Sweden alone.

Rakel Berg is only 11 when her mother, the historian and translator Cecilia Berg, disappears without trace, leaving her publisher father Martin to bring up her and her brother Elis in a Gothenberg suburb.