The Singularity is a short, formally tilted novel about displacement, grief and catastrophic loss, and how they work together to distort time.

It begins in an unnamed coastal city, where a mother searches for her missing daughter, and gradually folds that disappearance into the life of another woman: herself displaced by war, carrying another history of family rupture and erasure. Karam refuses the tidy architecture of conventional narrative. 

The novel moves between mothers, daughters and grandmothers, between exile and return, between what can be remembered and what has become almost impossible to name. Domestic details sit beside disappearance, political violence and poverty without being used merely as background scenery; the ordinary world is precisely where historical catastrophe has lodged itself.

Originally published in Swedish in 2021, The Singularity is Karam’s second novel and her English-language debut. It was shortlisted for Sweden’s August Prize and the European Union Prize for Literature. This edition is translated by Saskia Vogel.

Edition & condition: Text Publishing, Melbourne, 2024. Australian paperback edition. Translated by Saskia Vogel. Light shelf wear; internally clean. Very good condition.