Mother Walls

Liv Nimand Duvå’s Mother Walls is a powerful and unforgettable birth story.

What should be a completely ordinary, uncomplicated birth develops into a five-day nightmare for Rosa and her partner Gilbert. Night and day blend together and the border between dream and reality vanishes. In a morphine haze, Rosa is reunited with her dead grandmother and together they embark on a perilous trek through the forest to the mothers walls.

Mothers Walls is a dark and dreamlike novel about births and mothers. A story about waiting—for life, for death, for a release that will not come. It is also a novel about incredible pain, the feeling of abandonment, alienating hospitals, and the longing for a community of other mothers—both living and dead.

About the author 

Liv Nimand Duvå, b. 1987, made her authorial debut in 2017 with We Are Probably Heroes (Vi er vel helte) for which she received the Munch-Christensens Grant and which was recognized by the Danish Arts Council. Duvå’s second novel, Rose Ruling (Rosenreglen), came out in 2019. Published in March 2022, Mothers Walls is her third book.

Text translated by Sharon Rhodes