Photo © Hilda Randulv

Andréa Ager-Hanssen

Andréa Ager-Hanssen is a Gothenburg-based author from Sweden. She holds a master’s degree in Comparative Literature, attended Angered’s Writers' School, and is a member of Skrivarkollektivet Gbg, a writers’ collective. She is also a reader leader in Shared Reading and a board member of Gothenburg's Literature House.

Havoc (published by Natur & Kultur, 2025) is her debut novel, and BLYANT Agency is proud to represent the foreign rights. Below, you can read Ager-Hanssen's own reflections on her book.

Cover by Sigge Kühlhorn

Havoc (Natur & Kultur, Sweden 2025)

Say that you are heading for disaster. Perhaps a financial one, a personal bankruptcy, or you suddenly find yourself ostracized at work and hated by everyone. Is there a tipping point where things spiral out of control? Or does a catastrophe sneak up on you, without notice?

Hedda is not completely sure which direction her life is heading. On the one hand, the work with her thesis is going slowly. Which is perhaps not surprising, since she has tasked herself with renewing the entire field of literary studies with her work about Catherine Parr—Henry VIII’s sixth and final wife, who survived him. But Hedda keeps getting distracted, and her advisor is avoiding her in the hallways. On the other hand, she’s pregnant! With her first child! And has a great boyfriend who loves her. Until disaster strikes.

Enter: Dad. The former dot-com millionaire, the magician with the grand plans and the unbreakable self-confidence. Once they were a family: Hedda, her brother, mom and dad. An unusual family, that flew Concorde and had to hide from the bailiffs. A bubble that burst once the magician ran out of tricks, and now when he shows up again with his manic energy something feels different.

For Hedda, the present starts to blur with childhood memories, and she makes some bad decisions. Perhaps bad decisions are something that runs in the family, and the question is rather what holds real value in life. In a tangle of crown jewels, a lost child, and billion-dollar companies turning out to be pipe dreams, Hedda and her family create an alternative reality of their own, one that suits them better. And even though they don’t care about facades, there is something else threatening to collapse, a chaos that engulfs everything.

Havoc is a rowdy, darkly humorous novel about money, inheritance and family. It’s not about having bad morals. It’s about having a great imagination.

Quotes from reviews Havoc

"Havoc is a comical, yet dark novel about the worship of money, the demon that devastates everything in its path. /…/ Everything is an illusion, nothing is constant, not even that which one really wants. It cuts into my heart, my tears flow. Havoc is a truly impressive debut by Andréa Ager-Hanssen."
Sydsvenska Dagbladet

"an entertaining and painful debut about family finances" Sveriges Radio, Kulturnytt

"Havoc really makes you not want to be insanely rich. But above all, the narrative has an incredible drive and a beautiful, bold language. The author skillfully weaves together the story’s threads of grief and longing. She shows the values that venture capitalists tend to forget." Upsala Nya Tidning

"Andréa Ager-Hanssen captures how the logic of capitalism tightens around every aspect of our lives, how it shapes and distorts us. With a direct, contemporary language and a protagonist who lies to herself just as much as to others, she illustrates how we can be both victims and willing participants in a system we despise. It is a critique of modern society that is as funny as it is frustrating, as private as it is public." Kult Magasin

"Andréa Ager-Hanssen is a literary scholar, and it is hardly a coincidence that she has named her protagonist Hedda, alluding to Ibsen’s dark family drama Hedda Gabler. There are similarities, not least in Hedda’s desperate longing for a normal, non-privileged life. But she never gets there. Money destroys both life and relationships." Borås Tidning

"The tone of the text is irresistible. /.../ Andréa Ager-Hanssen has written a novel rich in associations and promises of an interesting continuation."
Göteborgs-Posten

"Ager-Hanssen’s tightly wound narrative is not just about a chaotic family, but can also be read as a critique of a society that has lived beyond its means without dealing with the consequences. /.../ It is an intelligent and tragicomic debut that does not shy away from neither darkness nor pain." Expessen

Andréa Ager-Hanssen about Havoc

"I will never write about money. That’s what I told myself when I started devoting time to my writing. So I wrote about other stuff. Sometimes I pushed the boundaries and attempted, among other things, a post-apocalyptic depiction of Stavanger with confusing elements of oil catastrophe and nuclear weapons. I wrote a short story about a heavy metal fan going on a bus trip with a pensioner group from the Swedish Church. I wrote about remote locations and made-up places. I wrote something about Svalbard and Jan Mayen. Yes, I tried my ways with it (with varying results). But then it crept up on me anyway.

It started with a text about a dad who was not like other dads. And about a mom demolishing a yew bookshelf with a chainsaw. There were two children too, Hedda and Valentin, who tried to navigate their parents' economic rollercoaster. A bewildering world of adults where no one explains anything but the consequences affect everyone.

What happens to a person when a never-ending stream of exclusive furniture and expensive cars get in the way of close relationships, obstructing one's emotions and ability to have vital conversations? What happens when you stop acknowledging fundamental needs and just fill everything with a two-ton container of Danish interior design and broken sound systems from Bang&Olufsen? Reality becomes out of reach, that’s what I believe.

Someone told me that this book is about the legacy of the dot com-bubble, about living in a household dictated by a venture capitalist economy. On closer thought, it was probably me who said that. But basically, it’s about Hedda. An academic wunderkind who struggles to finish her thesis. A social improviser unable to hold truth and lies apart. Miss Universe with a constant break-out of oral herpes. Above all, Hedda knows what is important in life.

That’s how we ended up here. I have written a novel about money and value. And possibly the most important things of all: crown jewels."

Bibliography

Härverk/Havoc (Natur & Kultur, Sweden 2025)

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