Elin Cullhed

Euphoria is a fictionalization of Sylvia Plath’s last year, ending two months before her death. In the first person, she tells of the clash between her intellectual needs and maternal duties; her love for the children and her life’s need to write; and her addiction to her husband, the poet Ted Hughes, which is killing her. “Trapped” in a country house and in her increasingly alien body carrying a new life, Sylvia experiences love, jealousy, euphoria, and despair with devastating force, while proceeding step by step along a path whose end is universally known. But you won’t find this in Euphoria; it is a novel celebrating Sylvia as a spirited, passionate, and creative woman.

Vydalo nakladatelství Argo, 2022

Swedish novelist Elin Cullhed (* 1983) made her debut in 2016 with the critically acclaimed young adult novel The Gods (Gudarna). The author became deeply interested in Sylvia Plath’s life and work when she found herself in a similar situation: she had several children with a husband who was also a writer, and she found it challenging to combine caring for her family with writing. But somehow, she managed, and the result is a novel that won Sweden’s prestigious literary award, the August Prize, in 2021.