Victoria Kielland, My Men
A Best Crime Novel of 2023 — NY Times
A Best Book of 2023: Mystery — Wall Street Journal
A Best Book We Read in 2023 — Chicago Review
A Best International Crime Novel of 2023
and Best Historical Fiction of 2023 — Crime Reads
Dublin Literary Award (currently on longlist)
“A stylistic tour de force . . . It reads like an expressionist prose-poem penned by a stark-minded zealot . . . Kielland is clearly a gifted writer, and My Men is an impressively realized creation.” — Tom Nolan, The Wall Street Journal
“This fascinating, off-kilter novel about a female serial killer is an unexpectedly thrilling read.” — Karl Ove Knausgaard, author of My Struggle
“Kielland’s dense, lyrical novel offers both insight and opacity . . . Despite the subject matter, this novel is not your typical thriller. The language, in Searls’s translation, is dense, poetic, and deeply figurative.” — Kirkus Reviews
“Splendidly translated by Damion Searls… Kielland plumbs Belle’s inner life through jaggedly rhythmic prose, where what should be obvious is sometimes opaque and what’s often shrouded — female rage — takes center stage.”
— New York Times
From Victoria Kielland, a rising star of Norwegian literature, comes My Men, a literary reimagining of the harrowing true story of Norwegian maid turned Midwestern farmwife Belle Gunness, the first female serial killer in American history.
Among thousands of other Norwegian immigrants seeking freedom, Brynhild Størset emigrated to the American Upper Midwest in the late nineteenth century, changing her name and her life. As Bella, later Belle Gunness, she came in search of not only fortune and faith but, most of all, love. In pursuit of her American Dream, Kielland’s Belle grows increasingly alienated, ruthless, and perversely compelling.
Raw, visceral, and altogether hypnotic, My Men has won several literary prizes in Norway, been translated into a dozen languages, and is a brutal yet radically empathetic glimpse into the world of a woman consumed by desire.