A spellbinding, darkly poetic literary novel that plunges us into the inner life of America's first female serial killer 'This fascinating, off-kilter novel about a female serial killer is an unexpectedly thrilling read' Karl Ove Knausgaard Seventeen-year-old Brynhild is in a fever - she can't quiet the screaming world inside her. When an intense affair ends brutally, she flees Norway for America at the end of the nineteenth century in search of a new life. Changing her name first to Bella, later to Belle, she is driven from any potential refuge by an unbearable tension that won't let her keep still. As Belle seeks release in a series of men, her yearning for an all-consuming love erupts into violence. In this breathtaking novel, Victoria Kielland imagines her way into the tumultuous inner life of the Norwegian woman who became Belle Gunness - America's first known female serial killer. Written in prose of wild, visceral beauty, My Men is a radically empathetic and disquieting portrait of a woman capable of ecstatic love and gruesome cruelty.

"The intense, progressively feverish quality of the novel is far closer to the visceral interiority of Clarice Lispector or Jean Rhys than anything by Jo Nesbø or Stieg Larsson... A singular novel of unusual power from a fearless and remarkable writer" - Guardian

"An extraordinary, visceral fictionalisation of Belle's life... Belle's story is not one of a police procedural or thriller... The prose flies and flays, is porous and illuminating" - Irish Times

"An extraordinary portrait of the inner turmoil and ecstasy of the woman widely regarded to be America's first female serial killer" - Marie Claire

"My Men, superbly translated by Damion Searls, is a portrait of a woman trying, and failing, to escape her punishing trajectory. Bit by bit, day by day, we see, and come to understand, what has made Belle Gunness a killer" - New York Times

"Kielland plumbs Belle's inner life in jaggedly rhythmic prose, where what should be obvious is sometimes opaque and what's often shrouded - female rage - takes centre stage" - New York Times, Best Crime Books of the Year

"A stylistic tour de force, a third-person account of Belle Gunness's grotesque odyssey as perceived through her own sensorium... A gifted writer" - Wall Street Journal

"Her spiritual yearning and profane desires are captured in dynamic and subversive prose as Kielland explores how Belle's homicidal tendencies derive from a perverted sense of love. It's an impressive feat of historical imagination" - Publishers Weekly

"Lyrical... Despite the subject matter, this novel is not your typical thriller. The language, in Searls' translation, is dense, poetic, and deeply figurative" - Kirkus Reviews

"One of the best young authors we have... Kielland makes Brynhild tragic rather than cold-blooded" - Morgenbladet

"Gripping, unique, and amazingly well-written" - Vårt Land

"Unusual and extraordinary" - Klassekampen

"What this rich and poignant novel does is try to get as deep as possible to the core of a person who struggles with what she is doing to the world and to herself. My Men is a literary achievement of the highest order" - De Standaard, 5 stars