Care, Betrayal and What Shapes Us

In her new novel Vera, Sandra Lillebø returns to two defining periods in her young life: the time when the narrator, having just turned 12, was given responsibility for a Nordland horse, and when, as a 15-year-old, she met her first boyfriend. Through these vignettes, the novel explores how care – and the absence of it – shapes a person, and how loneliness can take root as early as childhood.

In Vera, Lillebø uses her raw experiences to say something universal about dependence, vulnerability, and the little and large betrayals that make us who we are. Nature, the body and the landscape form a backdrop where the boundary between inner and outer life is constantly shifting.

In conversation with Olaug Nilssen, Lillebø reflects on how she writes about these experiences, on the relationship between truthfulness and sincerity, and on how neglect – both visible and more silent – can be turned into literature.

The conversation will be held in Norwegian.