Gunnhild Øyehaug should be more famous than Knausgård.

This year one of our most interesting authors came out with a quirky and nimble-footed collection of nine essays dealing with art, literature and film, as well as other things that inspire the Bergen-based author. Kate Bush’s sensual music videos, Edvard Munch’s paintings and the sculptor Giacometti’s statues are just a few of those she puts under her merry magnifying glass. Perfect reading for the woman of culture.

Øyehaug writes keenly on art, existence, creation and inspiration. Big topics, but these essays are deliciously down-to-earth, funny, elucidating – and at times moving. What about hunting the hallways of the Louisiana Museum, only to be captivated along the way by something else entirely than why you were there in the first place? Even though you thought you were long since done with Giacometti?

Gunnhild Øyehaug’s essay collection is a tantalising portal that leads you straight into some completely unpredictable and highly entertaining cultural analyses. [...] Her style is playful and elegant, but also heartfelt. Not in the sense of sentimentality or bombast, but rather genuine and thoroughly considered. [...] As such, Øyehaug is becoming one of the most interesting essayists we currently have.

Mari Grydeland, Aftenposten

Gunnhild Øyehaug manages like few others to home in on how art can poke away at existence. A common thread in the essay collection Undercover Heart is the insights that art can give – often a little inadvertently. The text about Nikolai Astrup’s paintings is undoubtedly one of my finest moments of reading in the past year. [...] Øyehaug has written a funny, heartfelt and extremely lucid book. All at once.

Few writers deserve the cliché “distinctive” more than Øyehaug. Undercover Heart is a wild and razor-sharp collection of texts about art.

Øyehaug writes sparklingly funny and fabulously composed essays, as usual.