Nothing Grows by Moonlight

A Novel

By: Torborg Nedreaas, Sheila Heti - introduction

Narrated by: Amrita Acharia, Cameron Krogh Stone

'Breathtakingly powerful' Guardian

'This startling, absorbing book will leave you fizzing with anger and possibility' Noreen Masud

In the blue dusk of a spring evening, a man is drawn to a lonely, beautiful stranger across a station platform. She follows him home, and over one heady night of wine and cigarettes, recounts to him the devastating story of her life . . .
First published in 1947, Nothing Grows by Moonlight tells the haunting tale of one woman’s soul-shattering love affair. When an obsessive passion for her high school teacher consumes a small-town seventeen-year-old, her life spirals out of control, giving way to pregnancy, poverty and alienation. Here, darkness and light converge, and unrequited love blooms against the shadows of societal injustices, as she fights for autonomy: over her life, her mind and her body.

Captivating, visceral and brimming with emotion, Nothing Grows by Moonlight is a feminist classic of Scandinavian literature, and an uncompromising ode to female desire.

Critic reviews

Breathtakingly powerful... the story powers through to a conclusion that's both hard to read and impossible to look away from—John Self, Guardian

Visceral... offers a portrait, occasionally touching on the gothic, of what an oppressive society can do to the minds and bodies of both teenage girls and industrial workers. There's a remarkable energy to Nedreaas's prose—Literary Review

Nothing Grows by Moonlight, in a luminous translation by Bibbi Lee, is as enigmatic as its title. Across a station platform in the blue twilight of a spring evening, a man is drawn to the sight of a woman, a stranger. The scene is at once electric and dramatic... Throughout the course of the long night, her own desperate tale of devastating love and its tortuous consequences is revealed—Irish Times

Both a lament and a protest... A new generation of readers might feel nostalgic for Torborg Nedreaas's conviction that a better future is on its way—TLS

It’s fantastic, it’s incredible—Pedro Almodóvar

This startling, absorbing book will leave you fizzing with anger and possibility—Noreen Masud

Nothing Grows by Moonlight is a novel as beautiful and affecting as its title suggests. The book’s themes will resonate with readers as much today as it did in 1947. It is masterful in the balancing of story and atmosphere and powerful enough that your heart aches increasingly with each page. It has become a firm favourite and a story I will never forget—Emily Slapper

It’s hard to read this book without thinking of Tove Ditlevsen... Torborg has Norwegian pathos, a kind of compulsive, pastural song that could call any living creature home for milking... It is done, as with Tove, with great musicality, even if the music is quite different—Dorthe Nors