Translated into English by Deborah Bragan-Turner

LONGLISTED for the Booker International Prize 2019

WINNER of the Nordic Council Literature Prize 2007

The narrative in The Faculty of Dreams revolves around Valerie Solanas, the sixties icon famous for writing the ultra-feminist manifesto SCUM (Society for Cutting Up Men) and who later shot and seriously injured Andy Warhol.

In the novel’s fictious background story, the author visits Valerie Solanas at the end of her life in the hotel in a red-light district in San Francisco where Solanas was residing when she died in April 1988. Sara Stridsberg mixes documentary material and free fiction in a feverishly vibrant prose which finds Valerie Solanas permanently on the verge of disaster, a prodigy who simultaneously mirrors and distorts the stories that constitute her world.

*

*Voted the best Swedish novel of the decade by one hundred Swedish critics, authors, journalists and publishers, in the newspaper Dagens Nyheter.

"Valerie is one of the most genuinely insubordinate books I have read, and one of the most beautiful . . . Stridsberg infuses her protagonist with epic, tragic brilliance . . . her anarchism is humanized, without losing its teeth . . . One finishes this novel feeling taken by Valerie, but, even more, moved by the author’s love for her, the generosity that allows a potentially pathetic figure to become heroic, a guardian spirit."
― The New Yorker

“A shimmering and nuanced portrait . . . The gentleness and strength of Stridsberg’s writing lends itself perfectly to this deeply empathetic novel. Most of all, in the story’s refusal to seek easy answers, its dedication to acknowledge and address the difficulties of its own construction, and its belief in the power of writing all make Valerie a book and a portrayal that I think Solanas herself would be proud of."
― Chicago Review of Books

“Stridsberg’s novel achieves the heightened logic and coherence of a dream, covering vast distances without the plodding intermediate steps of a waking mind . . . Deborah Bragan-Turner’s English translation . . . captures a certain historical flavor of American English and skews it ever so slightly, all while incorporating Solanas’s writings seamlessly . . . Its diagnosis of diseased power structures is likely to remain alarmingly accurate for decades to come.”
― Music and Literature

“Inventive and stimulating . . . As each new piece of Stridsberg’s portrait of Valerie is added, it alters the big picture, provocatively. The novel is as much about how little one can understand other people as it is about Valerie’s life. Stridsberg entertainingly casts new light on both Solanas and on how society views pop culture.”
―Publishers Weekly

“This is a brilliant re-imagining of the life and times of one of America’s great cultural icons. If Solanas was alive I’m sure she’d be amazed (and perhaps even gratified) to see what poetic feeling her remarkable destiny has aroused.”
―Vivian Gornick

“Sara Stridsberg’s fantasy about the life of Valerie Solanas has attained the status of myth. We can finally read that novel―a cross between Franz Kafka’s Amerika and Sarah Kane’s 4.48 Psychosis―in this powerful, poetic translation. Stridsberg conjures up the loneliness and desire of Valerie, our Valerie―shit-stirrer, tormented genius, cast-off misfit―as well as the vertigo, passion, and complexity of a whole life beyond and through the sensationalized headlines, the caricature. Stridsberg’s intensity and love in writing Valerie’s life is something of its own manifesto.”
―Kate Zambreno


“Stridsberg excels in mixing documented facts with a liberated fiction in a feverish, vibrant prose.”
―Nordic Council Award

“Brilliant, multi-layered, thrilling . . . a burning love letter with icy observation at its core.”
―Svenska Dagbladet (Sweden)


“Stridsberg's evocation of Valerie Solanas conjures images that are poetic and enchanting.”
―Dagens Nyheter (Sweden)

“With [Valerie], Stridsberg proved that she is among the finest authors of contemporary Nordic literature.”
―Aftenposten (Norway)


“Stridsberg's language is brilliant; feverish yet clear. The depiction of the milieus of American workers, academics and artists from the 1940s to the 1980s is superb, but at the centre is the tender yet razor-sharp insight into the mind of a limitlessly fascinating individual.”
―Deutschland Radio Kultur (Germany)

“Urgent and poetic . . . fascinating literature.”
―Bayerischer Rundfunk (Germany)

“Affectionate and incisive, compassionate and courageous.”
―Neue Zürcher Zeitung (Switzerland)

“The thrilling spectacle, the muscles and bone, of a vibrant, living text . . . This novel of rare strength unleashes an irresistible seduction.”
―Le Monde (France)


“Impressive and bewitching, [Valerie] is unquestionably one of the revelations of the publishing season.”
―Le Nouveau Magazine Littéraire (France)

“At once a hagiography, an exercise in admiration, and a portrait of a marginal America, this passionate novel reveals the fate of the woman who wanted to shoot Andy Warhol.”
―Lire (France)