With one blue eye and one brown, Idun Hov was never going to be as pretty as her perfect twin sister, Urd. She is clumsy too, whereas Urd is graceful and clever. Now calling herself Kathrine Sand, to erase all memory of her father, Urd hosts a successful prime-time television show called Confession, while Idun is a patient in a mental asylum, her fame as an author far behind her.
Alone in her hospital room, Idun begins to write again, summoning to mind each member of the Hov family in an attempt to plumb the depths of her illness and to solve the mystery of what really happened during the German occupation of Norway when she was a little girl. Why, when did he offer no defence? Did he really deliver his own brother, a member of the Resistance, to the Gestapo? And what happened to the little Jewish boy Aaron, who lived in her grandfather's attic and swore Idun to secrecy?
Soon her family chronicle assumes a broader scope, mirroring the violent history of our century. Idun's near-Proustian search for lost time is a psychological tour de force, whereby she gradually unlocks a past to which she alone has the key.
