As you pull the blinds up and see the layer of powder covering the spidery limbs of the young beech outside your second-story bedroom window you know it will be a Sunday like no other. A quick glance at the thermometer confirms winter’s sudden appearance and there is no time to lose.
Set in the multicultural city of Malmö, Sweden, The Hum of Concrete brings readers into five intersecting lives. Nassrin walks into the ocean with her baby in her arms. Bodil ponders the meaning of friendship from the roof of a church. Rhyme seeks shelter in a tree full of fairy lights. And all around them, the hum of concrete. With photographic precision, Anna Solding captures the fleeting beauty of everyday life.
“Few novels invite you in as irresistibly as this one, and few give you as exhilarating and surprising a ride. Anna Solding writes with such tenderness, intelligence, and invention. A novel to love and explore with and return to.”
— Peter Bishop, Varuna, The Writers’ House
“The characters who figure in the interwoven stories that make up The Hum of Concrete are treated with heartwarming tenderness. The narration is unobtrusively and effectively managed, the Swedish settings vividly realized.”
— J. M. Coetzee, author of Disgrace
“Anna Solding has created a quirky panoply of characters, wielding admirable authorial control … and keeping her narrative humming with flair and confidence.”
— Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature
“This discontinuous narrative weaves a magical intimacy into the cycle of birth, sex, and death in the city.”
— Brian Castro, author of The Bath Fugues
SHORTLISTED, PEOPLE'S CHOICE AWARD, Most Underrated Book Award
LONGLISTED, COMMONWEALTH BOOK PRIZE
