New title: ‘Kata’
An about-to-hit-forty cancer ward nurse in Iceland, Kata is a woman destined for a journey of revenge. After her teenage daughter Vala goes missing, Kata throws herself into work to forget. When her daughter’s body is found at last, Kata learns the awful truth of the horrors that she suffered before dying. And as Kata listens, it’s as if her world begins to gently shift out of focus, tilt off its axis: The odyssey begins. The end destination is justice, but even more so, revenge. Revenge on her daughter’s murderers, and on all men who abuse women. Because vengeance is not a male privilege, though the hand throwing the acid nearly always is. Acting according to the device “Until men’s and women’s rights are equal, women will submit their own agenda: Defence, Punishment and Sisterhood,” Kata begins the bloody process of reclaiming womankind’s right to avenge injustices, and themselves.
When Steinar Bragi began the research work for his novel Kata, he was shocked and appalled by the Icelandic statistics for crime against women, in particular that of sexual assault cases. Kata is a novel born out of this shock, and the raw horror that hides behind the figures.