Cora Sandel

Cora Sandel (1880–1974) is highly regarded nationally and internationally as a unique voice in Norwegian literature. With the Alberta trilogy, published between 1926 and 1939, she cemented her position as one of our finest novelists.

Born Sara Fabricius in Christiania (now Oslo) and raised in Tromsø, Sandel left home to pursue a career as a painter, living in France and Italy (mainly Paris) for 15 years. Short on money, she started submitting travel letters and short stories to various Norwegian newspapers to scrape a living. One of these stories piqued the interest of the publishing director at Gyldendal, who encouraged her to write a novel. When Alberta and Jacob was published under a pseudonym in 1926, Sandel was 46, recently divorced, and living in Sweden with her young son. The novel was an immediate success, and sold surprisingly well for a debut, making it possible for Sandel to earn a living from her writing.

The Alberta trilogy is not autobiographical, but Sandel certainly makes use of her own experiences. Setting her stories in Tromsø or Paris, she often wrote of female artists, portraying personal and artistic growth, emancipation, loneliness and exile with wit and compassion. Through the intensity of her gaze, she makes us look at these people and understand the intricacies of individual moral dilemmas, the courage of small rebellions, and the tragedy of any one person's everyday life. Sandel’s literary production does not cover many titles, but they are all characterized by her condensed, precise prose. Critics often liken her writing to impressionist painting, it being colorful, evocative and nuanced. For her 1954 publication she chose the label ‘interior with figures’ rather than novel, a label fitting for much of her writing.