Strega: A Novel
Johanne Lykke Holm, Saskia Vogel (translation)With toiletries, hairbands, & notebooks in her bag, & at her mother’s instruction, a nineteen-year-old girl leaves her parents’ home & the seaside town she grew up in. Out the train window, Rafa sees the lit-up mountains and perfect trees—and the Olympic Hotel waiting for her perched above the small village of Strega.
There, she & eight other girls receive the stiff black uniforms of seasonal workers & move into their shared dorm. But while they toil constantly to perform their role & prepare the hotel for guests, none arrive. Instead, they contort themselves daily to the expectations of their strict, matronly bosses without clear purpose and, in their spare moments, escape to the herb garden, confide in each other, & quickly find solace together.
Finally, the hotel is filled with people for a wild & raucous party, only for one of the girls to disappear. What follows are deeper revelations about the myths we teach young women, what we raise them to expect from the world, & whether a gentler, more beautiful life is possible.
In stimulating & uninhibited imagery, Johanne Lykke Holm builds a world laced with the supernatural, filled with the secrecy & potential energy of girls on the cusp of womanhood. An allegory for the societal rites, expectations of women, & violence we too easily allow, Strega builds like a spell that keeps exerting its powers long after reading.
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Johanne Lykke Holm is a writer & translator. Her novel Strega was a finalist for the Nordic Council Literature Prize, won the PEN Translates Award, & was short-listed for the European Union Prize for Literature.
Saskia Vogel is a writer, screenwriter, & translator from Swedish & German into English.