The Singularity

‘Lyrical, devastating and completely original, The Singularity is a work of extraordinary vision and heart. Balsam Karam’s writing is formally inventive and stylistically breathtaking, and Saskia Vogel’s translation does shining justice to its poetic precision and depths.’ * Preti Taneja, author of Aftermath *
‘A profound and emblematic tale of women’s experience of war, displacement, and loss, of nameless mothers searching for their loved ones. Balsam Karam is a rare literary talent, with deep roots in one of the world’s oldest cultures of storytellers. The Singularity is a timeless work of art; it will be praised for years to come.’ * Pirooz Jafari, author of Forty Nights. *
‘Balsam Karam writes at the limits of narrative, limning the boundary of loss where “no space remains between bodies in the singularity”. With a lucid intimacy, Karam braids a story of witness and motherhood that fractures from within only to rebuild memory and home on its own terms. The Singularity is a book of conviction where those who have been made to disappear find light and keep their secrets too.’ * Shazia Hafiz Ramji, author of Port of Being *
‘Balsam Karam’s new novel is enormously powerful…To read The Singularity is like drinking directly from a flood of tears.’ * Aftonbladet *
‘I cannot recall anyone else in contemporary Swedish literature who writes like Karam—with remarkable beauty. This could very well conceal the horrors and injustices she portrays, but with Karam that becomes the opposite: inexorably real.’ * Svenska Dagbladet *

‘Karam’s language is entirely her own. It is poetic and suggestive, sometimes like a single stream-of-consciousness, where two different scenarios are portrayed in parallel. Here and now and at the same time in the past, carrying one’s losses, engraved on the body like deep wounds. This novel asks if traumas can be ranked—the loss of a child, a language, a country, an identity…The Singularity is a journey into a black hole. A point with no return.’

* Jönköpings-Posten *
‘The Singularity is a novel that appears to have been created from dark matter, elusive, giddying and with an enormous linguistic and narrative density.’ * Expressen *

‘Disconnection, the exclusion of human beings, is one of several epicentres in The Singularity. Or rather, human beings as consumable goods… Karam is taking a major step forward in this new novel.’

* Borås Tidning *
‘The Singularity is a novel that grows in strength, both in terms of structure and content. The linguistic awareness, as well as the daring stylistic techniques and the experiences described, show that Balsam Karam is an author to reckon with for years to come.’ * Sydsvenskan *
‘Unlike dominant understandings from psychoanalysis, Karam does not present trauma as a circumscribed event that can be fixed in time and space. Rather, in The Singularity, it becomes an all-consuming state, in which new losses are understood as part of a much longer history, perhaps already predetermined long before they happen.’ * Swedish Review *
‘Karam’s prose is sometimes musical, sometimes austere, sometimes light as a feather. It is lyrical, enigmatic and meticulously composed, never bombastic or sentimental…Is Balsam Karam one of Sweden’s most talented, original and relevant rising stars of literature? I believe so. I hope she never stops writing.’ * Dagens Nyheter *
’The Singularity is a novel about loss and longing—a mother who misses her child, children who miss their mother, and all of those who miss their country as they try to feel the new earth in their new land. A deeply moving work of fiction from a true voice of Scandinavia.’ * Shahrnush Parsipur, author of Women Without Men: A Novel of Modern Iran *
‘A knotty, sui generis evocation of mothers’ feelings of fear and loss.’ * Kirkus *
‘A brilliant and beautiful study of displacement—this tale of migration and motherhood is satisfyingly full of narrative surprises.’ * Guardian *
‘I cannot recall anyone else in contemporary Swedish literature who writes like Karam.’ * Svenska Dagbladet *
‘The Singularity is a journey into a black hole. A point without return.’ * Jönköpings-Posten *
‘The Singularity is a novel that appears to have been created from dark matter, elusive, giddying and with an enormous linguistic and narrative density.’ * Expressen *
‘The Singularity is elegant—and explosive—prose.’ * Arbetarbladet *
‘Disconnection, the exclusion of human beings, is one of several epicentres in The Singularity. Or rather, human beings as consumable goods…Balsam Karam is taking a major step forward in this new novel. Her linguistic exploration is admirable. So is her ability to allow a milieu to exist right on the border between fiction and reality.’ * Borås Tidning *
‘The Singularity is a novel that grows in strength, both in terms of structure and content. The linguistic awareness, as well as the daring stylistic techniques and the experiences described, show that Balsam Karam is an author to reckon with for years to come.’ * Sydsvenskan *
‘Karam writes a prose that is sometimes musical, sometimes austere, sometimes light as a feather…Is Balsam Karam one of Sweden’s most talented, original and relevant rising stars of literature? I believe so. I hope she never stops writing.’ * Dagens Nyheter *
‘A distilled meditation on the despairs of motherhood, home and belonging. Brutal. Urgent. Exhilarating.’ * Bram Presser *
‘[A] supple and finely wrought narrative that takes in questions of motherhood, migration, and the plight of refugees…And resists the easy clichés and tropes that sometimes diminish fictional portrayals of migrant experience.’ * Age *
‘The Singularity is frequently heart-in-your-mouth reading.’ * Rumpus *
‘A distilled meditation on the despairs of motherhood, home and belonging. Brutal. Urgent. Exhilarating.’ * Bram Presser *
‘A novel of displacements—familial, cultural, geopolitical—that work to silence and make unknown the ties to land and life and community we depend upon. The rush of detail, memory, confusion and telegraphed yearning is stripped down to its barest coordinates.’ * Declan Fry, ABC Arts *
‘In Karam’s novel, a singularity becomes an unforgettable metaphor for the trauma of statelessness, which brings about the profound collapse of human lives in ways seemingly imperceptible to those outside.’ * Saturday Paper *

Balsam Karam (b. 1983) is of Kurdish ancestry and has lived in Sweden since she was a child. She is an author and librarian and made her literary debut in 2018 with the critically acclaimed Event Horizon, which was shortlisted for the Katapult Prize. The Singularity, her second novel, published in Sweden in 2021, was nominated for Sweden’s August Prize and shortlisted for the 2021 European Union Prize for Literature.

Saskia Vogel is a writer, screenwriter, and translator from Swedish and German into English. In 2021 she was awarded the Berlin Senate grant for non-German literature and an English PEN Translates Award and was a PEN American Translation Prize finalist. Vogel is based in Berlin.