The Listener

‘A unique and authentic voice that speaks to the reader across time and culture, heart to heart.’ Boyd Tonkin, The Independent Aunt Gerda – the good listener – fears the encroaching forgetfulness of old age. Her solution is to create an artwork that will record and, inevitably, betray the secrets long confided in her. So begins Jansson’s short story debut, a tour de force of scalpel-sharp narration that takes us from a disquieting homage to the artist Edward Gorey, to perfect evocations of childhood innocence and recklessness, to a city ravaged by storms, or the slow halting thaw of spring. These stories are gifts of originality and depth. In her first ever story collection, Jansson reveals the clarity of vision and light philosophical touch that were to become her hallmarks. The Listener was published in Swedish in 1971 but appears here for the first time in English. Sort Of Books have also published translations of seven other Tove Jansson books for adults: the novels The Summer Book, Fair Play and The True Deceiver; and the story collections Travelling Light, Art in Nature, Sculptor’s Daughter: A Childhood Memoir) and A Winter Book.