Beast

No one knows where little Leon got his strength from. But his mother, at least, knows that he’s hard to handle. Especially when he wants a cuddle. And Leon really likes to cuddle. While Danica is struggling with her son, Mirko struggles with his forbidden feelings. He is still only a boy when he falls in hot, burning love with Danica. It’s an impossible passion. Danica is not only a grown woman and mother of Leon, she’s also married to a giant of a man. But his heart and his passions drive Mirko out of his upright home and into Danica’s secret hell. The result is fatal for all those whom he cares about. And after a dramatic night, Mirko becomes bound to Leon and his mysterious powers for the rest of his life. Beast is a big story, in every sense, about guilt and innocence, but also a warm story about an unusual friendship

About the author 

Ane Riel is the author of two award-winning novels: Her debut The Butcher of Liseleje (2013), and Resin (2015). Her third novel Beast will be released in October 2019. Resin announced her arrival as a major new literary talent and it won numerous awards: The Niels Prize, The Glass Key, the Harald Mogensen Prize and the ‘Golden Bullet’ prize for best crime translation in Norway, as well as Sweden’s ‘Gyllene Kofoten’ award for best translated crime novel in Sweden, which led to it being named best Nordic thriller. Ane Riel has frequently been cited as an exciting new author with a refreshingly skewed and original linguistic flair as a storyteller. The split mind is her forte and she is often inspired to posit the action in the morbid, dark and downright grotesque.

Text translated by Paul Larkin