Love Novel

Ivana Sajko

See the full ranking

Love Novel won the HKW Internationaler Literaturpreis and was shortlisted for the 2023 Dublin Literary Award. In an unnamed city, a husband and wife wage a silent war of rage and resentment. He, an out-of-work Dante scholar, is trying to change the world—and write a novel. She was once a passable actress, but now she's failing at breastfeeding. They take on gigs and debts. He drinks cheap wine; she cleans obsessively. In their two-room flat the tension rises and turns exquisite: the rent is past due, their careers have stalled, the regime is crumbling, and there's always the baby, the baby who won't stop crying. Intense and astutely ironic, devastating and darkly comic, Ivana Sajko's Love Novel takes a scalpel to the heart of modern married life.