The Singularity

Reviews / Votes

'The Singularity, the second novel (and first to be published in English) by Balsam Karam...is evidence of the unique genius of human creativity...Language is at the heart of The Singularity, moving as it does from chaos and cacophony to the simple purity of a single voice, which is one measure of its brilliance and its beauty.'

- John Self, Observer 'The two narratives refract and then come together in a poetic convergence. There is a haunting, hushed tone to the novel, neatly evoked by Saskia Vogel's translation from the Swedish, that probes the disorienting effects of exile.'

- Anderson Tepper, New York Times 'Karam is a terrific prose stylist. Many of her sentences are surprising in their syntactical innovation and unique poetic rhythm. Like Virginia Woolf, Karam is interested in fragments, and in how they can fit and flow together. There is a choral quality to her writing, and a rich philosophical undertow to many of her observations.... The Singularity sweeps us along, offering profound wisdoms on motherhood and migration, war, home and grief.'

- Yagnishsing Dawoor, Times Literary Supplement 'In Karam's beautiful and harrowing English-language debut, a pregnant woman witnesses another woman plummet to her death from a promenade above the sea...The slim, subtle, and somewhat abstract narrative gestures at grand tragedy in its depiction of the indifferent metropolis as "a hole between what came to be and what could have been," where tourists pay little mind to a refugee's for her missing daughter. This is powerful.'

- Publishers Weekly starred review? 'Karam infuses this perceptive and compassionate novel with a sense of perplexity that perfectly matches the lives of those she portrays.'

- Declan O'Driscoll, Irish Times? 'The Singularity, deftly translated from the Swedish by Saskia Vogel, is an intense gem of a novel with a sophisticated structure. After a brave, even risky, prologue, which establishes the plot in a few pages, Balsam Karam moves deeper into the story of these anonymous women in an unidentified city who have been forced to flee their homes in an unnamed war.'

- Francesca Peacock, Spectator 'Lyrical, devastating and completely original, The Singularity is a work of extraordinary vision and heart. Balsam Karam's writing is formally inventive and stylistically breathtaking, and Saskia Vogel's translation does shining justice to its poetic precision and depths.'

- Preti Taneja, author of Aftermath 'I don't know anyone who writes like Balsam Karam. She blows me away. Truly one of the most original and extraordinary voices to come out of Scandinavia in... forever. You'll realize twenty minutes after you've finished this book that you're still sitting there, holding on to it.'

- Fredrik Backman, author of A Man Called Ove 'The Singularity by Balsam Karam is a novel about loss and longing-a mother who misses her child, children who miss their mother, and all of those who miss their country as they try to feel the new earth in their new land. A deeply moving work of fiction from a true voice of Scandinavia.'

- Shahrnush Parsipur, author of Women Without Men: A Novel of Modern Iran 'Balsam Karam writes at the limits of narrative, limning the boundary of loss where "no space remains between bodies in the singularity". With a lucid intimacy, Karam braids a story of witness and motherhood that fractures from within only to rebuild memory and home on its own terms. The Singularity is a book of conviction where those who have been made to disappear find light and keep their secrets too.'

- Shazia Hafiz Ramji, author of Port of Being 'Astringent, fuguelike.... A knotty, sui generis evocation of mothers' feelings of fear and loss.'

- Kirkus 'The Singularity reads as a great argument for realism: Karam's world and its characters are excellently rendered in its harsh light. Reading the novel, one is confronted with the fact that the most essential part of mothering - and humanity - is inconsistent with being a bystander.'

- Liz Wood, Word Without Borders 'Ultimately, Karam's book illustrates in vivid detail-in just 200 pages, intricate yet in accessible prose-the vivid trapped existence of refugees, of how they begin to live outside time and space, of how the world seems not to see or acknowledge their past or their presence, while denying them a future.'

- Rachel Leah Von Essen, Chicago Review of Books? 'It's a free-flowing and intensely empathetic novel that seeks out submerged connections and, importantly, resists the easy cliches and tropes that sometimes diminish fictional portrayals of migrant experience.

- Sydney Morning Herald? 'The novel's key achievement is in how it breaks the format of the multigenerational novel, with its well-worn progression from grandmother to mother to daughter. Karam is able to tell, in less than 200 pages, the multigenerational tale of two families in a surprising and nonlinear text of patterns and bleak repetitions, the rhythms of real life.'

- Emily McBride, The Rumpus? 'The novel's key achievement is in how it breaks the format of the multigenerational novel, with its well-worn progression from grandmother to mother to daughter. Karam is able to tell, in less than 200 pages, the multigenerational tale of two families in a surprising and nonlinear text of patterns and bleak repetitions, the rhythms of real life.'

- Emily McBride, The Rumpus 'No need for spoiler alerts here: what might feature as the climax in a more conventional narrative is laid bare in The Singularity's prologue. That it nevertheless remains absorbing to its very end is a testament to the depth of feeling and dexterity with which the Swedish-Kurdish novelist Balsam Karam orchestrates the rest of this novel about grief, loss, migration, and motherhood.'

- Rachel Stanyon, Asymptote