Klara Hveberg
Growing up among the fjords and mountains of Western Norway, Klara Hveberg loved to fill her pockets with sparkling stones from the beach. She played the violin, wrote poems and enjoyed juggling. As the world of literature seemed too scary, she sought refuge in the realm of mathematics, ending up with a doctoral degree in fractal geometry, perhaps the branch of mathematics closest in beauty to the visual arts. When health problems forced her to quit her job as a research mathematician at the University of Oslo, she once again sought refuge – but this time in her love of writing. Unexpectedly, fractal geometry helped her compose a novel of love and loneliness saturated with poetry, music, painting, mathematics – and juggling. It tells the tale of two female mathematicians, Rakel Havberg and Sofia Kovalevskaya, separated by a century and united by their quest for somebody to lean their loneliness against.Hveberg’s first novel "Lean your loneliness slowly against mine" has been described by the critics as "a beautiful love sonata in D minor", "a mathemagical debut" that "makes music out of mathematics and turns life into poetry", featuring "one of the most complex and interesting protagonists I have encountered". The novel was listed among the top 6 Norwegian titles in 2019 (by Adresseavisen), and has been sold to several countries, including the US, England, Germany, Korea and Poland.
Lean Your Loneliness Slowly Against Mine: A Novel
Klara Hveberg
A remarkable and heartbreaking debut novel with the lyrical beauty and emotional resonance of By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept and the thematic complexity of Asymmetry, that combines fractal mathematics and classical music to explore the infinitely complex patterns of love and the thin border between great passion and great loneliness.Rakel has always been more comfortable with numbers than with people. A gifted woman with a rare talent for math, she has never mastered the art of making friends. At nineteen, she moves to Oslo to attend university. There she meets Jakob, a brilliant older teacher who becomes fascinated by Rakel’s quick mind.
Jakob is struck by the similarities between Rakel and Sofja Kovalevskaja, the first woman to become a professor of mathematics, and the subject of the novel he is writing. Just as Kovalevskaja was close to her much older advisor, Rakel and Jakob are drawn to each other and eventually become lovers, although he is already married.
In the years to come, Rakel's academic career soars, but her health declines, and from her bedside she spends hours imagining Sofja’s life while trying to understand her own. With a gaze both naive and mercilessly sharp, she examines what may be her life's only love story, looking for patterns and answers in numbers, music, and literature.
Extraordinarily wise and penetrating, Lean Your Loneliness Slowly Against Mine explores the intricacies of the human heart, the complicated equation that is love, and the search to find meaning and connections when you need them most.
Translated from the Norwegian by Alison McCullough
© 2024 Pagebound