Bear Woman (The brand-new memoir from one of Sweden's bestselling authors) - Karolina Ramqvist

For readers of Rachel Cusk, Lisa Taddeo and the essays of Zadie Smith, Bear Woman is a beautifully wrought memoir from one of Swedens bestselling authorsA beautifully written and astonishing memoir of a woman - a writer - in the midst of motherhood, marriage and life.While struggling with the demands of family and career, the writer discovers a figure from history, Marguerite de la Rocque, a sixteenth-century noblewoman who was abandoned, pregnant, on a remote island in Nova Scotia. When she is finally rescued, her lover and her baby have died, but she has survived this inhospitable wilderness, alone, for two long years. Its a remarkable story of survival, but one that has been consigned to a footnote.Delving deeper into Marguerites hidden life, the writer begins to question her ability to tell this story, the story of any women in history - or even her own.The deeply personal journey of a writer, surprising and illuminating, and for me, familiar in the most reassuring way as she loses herself in this compelling story - Esther Freud, author of Hideous Kinky