It's here! Browse the 2024 Penguin Christmas gift guide
The Trio

The Trio

Summary

SHORTLISTED FOR THE BERNARD SHAW PRIZE 2023

Elegant, mature and richly atmospheric, a bittersweet love story glimpsed through the veil of memory


'The love child of Normal People and Brideshead Revisited... Sublime and elegiac' Francesca Reece

'[A] heady mix of hope and nostalgia, of desire and regret, of new love and lost love' Sunday Times

Thora, August and Hugo come from different worlds. One is an art school dreamer, one a wealthy scion of the old-world elite, and one an ordinary boy from out of town. But over the course of two sky-blue summers in Stockholm, they are drawn together magnetically.

Years later, Hugo is long estranged from Thora and August when their daughter knocks on his door. She has questions about her parents which she believes Hugo can answer - and the memories of those luminous days of youth come flooding back.

Modern yet timeless, poignant and euphoric, The Trio is a novel about the path not taken, the people we might have become, and the relationships which shape and haunt us long after they come to a close.

'Remarkably assured... Sharp, vividly imagined and affecting, [it] intrigues and captivates' Irish Times

'An international success before even being published, The Trio is a novel that stands well above the hype... Elegiac, bittersweet, [with] the golden shimmer of nostalgia' Gefle Dagblad

Reviews

  • A smart, elegant and moving novel, all the more impressive for it being Johanna Hedman's debut... The stylish emotional distance of Normal People
    The Times

About the author

Johanna Hedman

Johanna Hedman was born in Stockholm in 1993. She holds a Master's degree in Peace and Conflict Studies and she has lived and worked in Paris, southern India and New York, where she interned for the Swedish UN delegation. The Trio is her first novel.
Learn More

Sign up to the Penguin Newsletter

For the latest books, recommendations, author interviews and more