The Best Among us

Helene Uri
The best among us
More than 50 weeks
on the national
bestseller list!
«Uri is totally in control
of the narrative»
Dagens Næringsliv
GYLDENDAL AGENCY – GYLDENDAL NORSK FORLAG
Incredibly funny.»
«
Dagbladet, Oslo
GYLDENDAL AGENCY – GYLDENDAL NORSK FORLAG
H
elene Uri was well-placed to write what is in fact Norway’s first campus
novel. Having worked at the University of Oslo for 12 years, she resigned in
2005 and started to write full time. The Best Among Us is her fourth novel for
adults, and is all about intrigue, power struggles and ambition at Oslo University - though the politics of the corridors of academia could easily apply to
any workplace. One reviewer described the book as “a moral thriller set in an
environment that most of us associate with integrity and collegial support”
(Gjengangeren 5.7.07).
However, instead of focusing on the students, as most campus novels do, the
story concentrates on the interconnected fates of three ambitious linguists.
Pål Bentzen is a 33-year old charming redhead who has just secured a temporary research post in the newly-established Institute of Futuristic Linguistics,
otherwise known as Futling (amusingly close to the English word ‘footling’).
Even though, in his heart of hearts, his passion lies more with Old Norse than
futuristic linguistics, he cannot let this opportunity go, as it takes him closer to
his dream and ambition of a permanent position at the university. He is happy
with life and filled with an easy confidence.
Across the corridor sits Professor Edith Rinkel, his immediate superior; a
formidable woman with a passion for linguistics and bees, and a voracious appetite for shoes and young male students. Always immaculately turned out, and
trailing a perfume that reminds Pål of rotting apples, she is desired by many and
despised and feared by most. She is cool, keeps people at arm’s length (even her
young lovers) and is perhaps equally well known for her ruthless ambition and
her intellectual capacity. And Pål is not immune to this heady combination of
desire and despair that she instils in people.
Pål has a soft spot for women and they generally adore him. He enjoys a close
relationship with his mother, who, unknown to others, is the famous writer of
romantic novels, Paulette Ros. This has no doubt helped to nurture Pål’s fertile
fantasy and romantic tendencies, and he often casts his woman of the moment
in the role of one of his mother’s heroines. Despite his many relationships and
experience with women, nothing prepares him for his meeting with new colleague, Nanna Klev. He falls helplessly and “powerlessly” in love for the first
time, never doubting for a moment that he has found the one.
Nanna is clever, pretty and vivacious, and has attracted the attention of male
academics in both Norway and the US, where she was at the University of Chicago at the same time as the ominous Professor Rinkel. She confides in Pål that
she is working on a project to discover the underlying structure, a kind of fundamental skeleton, for all languages that will facilitate language technology and
translation. She has called this project REV21, short for Revolution TwentyFirst Century. She believes that Old Norse holds the key that will finally allow
her to break through and begs Pål to help her. How could he resist?
GYLDENDAL AGENCY – GYLDENDAL NORSK FORLAG
As it says in the book: “… when it comes to finding allies and to climbing
up the academic and social ladder, Edith Rinkel, Pål Bentzen and Nanna Klev
are very different. All three know all too well what is at stake. They have mastered the art of climbing. But at least one of them will climb too high - and
fall. And many people will say that it serves them right.”
Though Pål is perhaps the main character in the book, the women in his
life are very much the driving force of the story, as is the case in Uri’s previous three books for adults. She is a master at portraying attractive, successful
women, warts and all, and allowing the reader to be privy to the machinations
of the female mind. And Pål is an innocent, but willing victim. Alongside
these three characters, there is a cast of finely drawn support roles and academic stereotypes.
But the dominant voice, perhaps, is that of the narrator, the storyteller.
Helene Uri has chosen to have an omni-present narrator who steers and
guides us through the story, lifting a tablecloth corner here, peeking behind
a door there, pointing out and highlighting little details that change the reader’s perspective. One Norwegian literary critic commented that the style was
reminiscent of the old serialised novel, and certainly, the narrator reminds
me of Thackeray’s narrator in Vanity Fair. Helene Uri has also confessed to a
penchant for thrillers, and here the narrator “pulls back the apparently perfect
veneer to reveal the secrets” (Hamar Arbeiderblad), giving the book a strong
‘who-dunnit’ feel, but never giving away too much too soon.
The novel is divided into three parts, in the classic format of exposition,
development and climax. The first part tells us mainly about Pål and Edith
Rinkel, filling the reader in on their backgrounds, and pre-empting the story.
The story really only begins in part two, when Pål and Nanna meet and work
together on REV21. And part three takes us careering towards the crashing
climax, when all the lies, intrigue, betrayal and truth are revealed.
Helene Uri has a talent for writing light, elegant prose. Her background
as a linguist shines through, not only in the subject matter, but also in her
obvious enjoyment of language. She has managed to incorporate complex
linguistic concepts in an easily-digestible form that should appeal to the layman as well as the initiated. The Best Among Us is critical of certain elements
of the university system and the way in which these are sustained, but it is
also a very humane novel, about human vanity and vulnerability, as well as
passion and brilliance. It is a sparkling satire, written with great wit and irony,
but also with large doses of warmth and affection.
Kari Dickson
GYLDENDAL AGENCY – GYLDENDAL NORSK FORLAG
Helene Uri’s The Best Among Us has sold
more than 80 000 copies in Norway alone.
GYLDENDAL AGENCY – GYLDENDAL NORSK FORLAG
Selling points
THE BEST AMONG US:
F irst edition 17 weeks on the bestseller list.
Paperback edition continuously more than 30 weeks on the bestseller list
Book of the Month in Norway’s two leading book clubs.
More than 80 000 copies sold in Norway alone.
The Best Among Us is Norway’s first campus novel.
Helene Uri is translated to altogether seven languages, including English, German
and Japanese
The Best Among Us is a satirical and highly entertaining account of power games in
academic circles, with the women in control.
The Best Among Us has received brilliant reviews, comparing Helene Uri to David
Lodge, A. S. Byatt and Danish writer Christian Jungersen.
Selling points
HELENE URI:
H elene Uri, who is a doctor of lingustics, left her a promising career and her position at the Institute of Linguistics in Oslo. Immediately afterwards she began The
Best Among Us.
Helene Uri is an experienced writer, her output so far consisting of 10 books: novels, children’s books, books about language and linguistics.
Helene Uri writes a clear, stringent, playful prose.
The publication of The Best among Us has established 43 year-old Helene Uri as a
successful, sought-after, respected writer. Helene speaks fluent English and French.
GYLDENDAL AGENCY – GYLDENDAL NORSK FORLAG
Reviews
I ncredibly funny.
H elene Uri’s new novel The Best Among Us is
An intelligently entertaining book.
Dagbladet, Oslo
original, funny, elegant, engaging and sparkling.
This is a campus novel. Traditionally most novels
set at universities are student novels. Uri’s novel is
one of the few to focus on what goes on among
the employees at the university.
It’s concerned with ordinary human relationships;
lies and truth, being real and treason. It examines
an all-consuming intellectual drive, such complete
absorbtion by a topic that all else is pushed to one
side. What is it to climb too high; what is it to fall?
Uri’s novel deals with common phenomena that
strike a chord far beyond university circles.
Hamar Arbeiderblad, Hamar
A wealth of satirical sketches of the Norwegian
university environment ... a sparkling source of
philological humour in its widest sense.
Terje Stemland, Aftenposten
U
«
ri is totally in control of the narrative; with
her clever use of foreshadowing and secrecy she
creates the classic ‘must find out what happens’effect»
Dagens Næringsliv, Oslo
T he novel shows us what can happen in an en-
A playful and intelligent novel with a sting to-
vironment where there is razor-sharp competition
for positions and where employment committees
have to exercise their own judgement. Such things
may result in good literature, and Uri has written
an exciting novel about a triumvirate of ‘future
linguists’, bound together by criss-cross passions,
erotically – yes, but not least professionally. For
their love their profession too, and work day and
night: This does not simply concern glory and
honour, however, but also a real, profoundly felt
joy in reaching new insights.
The Best Among Us may be read both as a suspense
novel and as a critique of a system and those who
administrate and develop this system; for even if
the Institute of Futling doesn’t exist, the problems
that Uri describes are very recognizable.
NRK, Oslo
wards academia.
Helene Uri’s novel is an elegant lightweight, written
with oodles of humour and insight, and a minimal
dose of wickedness. Linguist and writer Uri openly
plays with the clichés, making full use of her inside
knowledge of the University in Oslo. The book is
full of gossip and intrigues, stealth and copulation
in large and small offices, but hardly anyone will
feel their honour attacked unless they have skin like
Japanese rice paper. Uri’s project has clearly been
to make her characters as light as balloons. This
goes for both the narrator of the book, the virile,
good-looking, red-haired Pal Bentzen and his colleague and the object of his love, Nanna Klev. But
most of all it goes for the talented, fifty-year old
professor Edith Rinkel: a stunning woman incapable of close relationships, but with a ravenous
appetite for young, male students in their 20ies,
whom she digests raw on the Persian carpet in her
office. She also has a predilection for bumble bees
and extravagant shoes.
…Uri produces an ending worthy of a thriller. The
Best Among Us is 400 pages of good entertainment.
Dagsavisen, Oslo
GYLDENDAL AGENCY – GYLDENDAL NORSK FORLAG
P
rior to writing The Best Among Us,
Helene Uri left her job at the university
and a promising academic career. “It started as a revenge novel,” she says, “I was
thinking about people who hadn’t been
nice to me. But on the way I discovered
that the fiction took over.”
Uri has received piles of e-mails and letters from academics and non-academics
alike, confiding in her their workplace intrigues, camaraderie, jealousy and envy. “I
thought that I was grossly exaggerating
and distorting in my novel, but the stories
that my readers have given me after having
read my book surpass my plot by far.”
Selected
bibliograPHY:
Deep Red 315, 2001
Honey Tongues, 2002
Foreign sales: Bra Böcker, Sweden / Klim, Denmark /
Norvik Press, UK / Heyne, Germany / Bhashantar, Bangladesh /
Rajmakal, Pakistan / India
Angel Of Nylon, 2003
Foreign sales: Klim, Denmark
The Best Among Us, 2006
Foreign sales: Klim, Denmark / Piper, Germany /
Alma Littera, Lithuania / Amphora, Russia /
De GeUs, The Netherlands
GYLDENDAL AGENCY – GYLDENDAL NORSK FORLAG
Honey Tongues
S
“ ublime katzenjammer. It’s elegant — told with a stringency
and in a playful language which simply is impressive. — With
minimal effects maximal impressions are created. It itches and
bites and oozes on the pages...”
Politiken, Copenhagen
H
“ oney Tongues is a sharp satire about women, elegantly
executed. No one has written so harshly about female
companionxcoriating satire.”
Berlingske Tidende, Copenhagen
A
“
suspense novel on the psychological level, disguised as an
entertaining story about women and friendship at their worst.”
Literatursiden.dk
I
“... t’s so absolutely marvellously good, well written and
entertaining...
Honey Tongues is a real book of quality, and I recommend it
to anyone who has a friend and wants to keep her!”
Koulturen
I
“ t’s quite a thriller, this. A psychological study of when
woman is woman’s enemy, set in a normally peaceful ‘sewing
circle’... Helene Uri has a strong grip of her characters, the
nastiness and the perfidities, and like Jungersen in The Exception,
one believes her. The language is precise and tightly composed
with a drive that makes the book difficult to put down.”
Lektørudtalelse.dk
GYLDENDAL AGENCY – GYLDENDAL NORSK FORLAG
The Best Among Us
P
“ erfidious and funny …
In her scathing, satirical novel “The Best among Us”, Helene Uri
cracks her whip over the working conditions at the nation’s highest
teaching institutions. And although the plot unfolds at the University
of Oslo, the caharacters’ childish intrigues will be easily recognizable
for anyone who has spent time in the academic world. Even for those
who haven’t, Uri’s story will provide entertaining shivers of horror,
enjoyment and a sense of rising disbelief. Fiction, perhaps. But far
from lacking in reality.”
BT, Denmark
T
“ here is something rotten in the campus. Dice throw 6.
The vantage point of the novel’s central character Pål affords one
surgically precise and satirical portrait after another of the staff at the
Institute of Futuristic Linguistics. Envy, alliances and intrigues thrive
to a degree that makes even the worst reality shows seem like trivial
smalltalk between bosom friends. Helene Uri conveys her narrative
with a linguistic elegance and a surplus of energy that allows her
to blend past, present, future and various narrative levels together
without ever losing her thread or putting her readers at the jeopardy
of doing so.”
Fyens Stiftstidende, Denmark
H
“ elene Uri composes her work with unique authority, and “The Best among Us”
is a joy to read, both language- and content-wise. Her language flows and shifts. It’s
enough to make one wonder why she holds a doctorate in Linguistics and not in
Literature. But that only goes to show the folly of categorizing people by their field of
expertise, which is exactly what they appear to do at the University of Oslo.”
Sentura, Denmark
She wanted to take revenge, the author reveals at the end of the book, and she does
seem to know the intrigues and the betrayal at the universities. And of course it’s very
exciting to read about, all the more so as the story is masterly constructed. But it’s the
style that got me fascinated from the very first paragraphs. The words connect in an
unusal way and make the reader float between the reality that’s described and what’s
said between the lines, that it’s all about words. (…)
A wonderful, light read which I only can recommend.
Kay Hoffmann, Germany
10
GYLDENDAL AGENCY – GYLDENDAL NORSK FORLAG P.O. Box 6860 St. Olavs Pl., N-0130 Oslo, Norway
E-mail: agency@gyldendal.no – www.gyldendal.no – Tel.: +47 22 03 41 00