SÆLSAFARI – THE MOVIE STAR
By Karen Strandbygaard
IN THIS HAUNTINGLY sharp novel, the fragile boundary between longing and delusion is laid bare, exposing the corrosive relationship between obscurity and fame. A struggling writer spends the summer adrift with her husband and children on their modest sailboat, until a chance sighting of an international film star — perched above the harbour in his gleaming fortress of steel and glass — turns her days into a fever of obsession.
WHAT BEGINS AS idle fantasy quickly curdles into something darker, as the weight of her own invisibility gnaws at her, and her hunger to be acknowledged grows unbearable. Beneath the endless sun and still waters of the Swedish archipelago, the social order wavers, and the promise of recognition becomes a trap. When she finally comes face to face with the actor, her fragile illusions splinter — and what seemed a harmless fascination escalates into a spiral that entangles everyone in the harbour, pulling them into an unsettling reckoning with desire, power, and the need to be seen.
ABOUT THE BOOK
First published by People’s, Denmark 2025
RIGHTS SOLD
Denmark, People’s
REVIEWS
Karen Strandbygaard has written a modern Gothic horror story about a family on a sunny sailing holiday in the Swedish archipelago. Seal Safari is a real surprise.
– Politiken
The author has a good grasp of narrative contrasts. First, she lulls her reader into a sense of calm with the idyllic Swedish archipelago, then she strikes with satanic revelations of human folly. (…)
Hugh Grant should know that he is the model (for a lot) in Karen Strandbygaard’s successful satire on celebrity fever, embarrassment, and rejected herd animals. Curiosity, envy, and self-righteousness are exposed as threats to a normal code of conduct, and the novel shows how false notions about someone else’s expected egocentricity can cause ordinary people to collapse morally. It is about embarrassment, not just as a personal act, but as a disturbing cultural trait.
– Weekendavisen
I don’t want to reveal the main plot of Karen Strandbygaard’s new novel. I’m afraid that, like me, you’ll think that it can’t be turned into a whole novel. It’s too small. What is the author thinking? But it can be turned into a whole novel, because Strandbygaard once again succeeds in making smoldering embers burst into flames and turn into a terrifying ending.
– Jyllands Posten
BOOKS
Fiction
