Origins

Shortlisted for DR (Denmark’s National Broadcasting) novel of the year 2020.
Shortlisted for the “Swiss Booksellers’ Darling” Prize

The 18 year old Sui decides to moves away from home. She was brought up by her father Kai, because her mother Miriam, a world famous artist, left them when Sui was a toddler. When she moves out, Kai is driven into a deep, personal crisis. He leaves his architect studio in the hands of his colleague for an undefined period of time, and goes to an alternative community in India to regain his strength.

After he leaves Denmark, Sui discovers a cyst in her tummy, and since her father is away she decides to pay a visit to her mother. The last time they met Sui was 7 years old, Miriam is now 70. She has turned her back on society and lives isolated in the deep, Swedish woods building her final artwork: A circular wall that seals the area around the world’s oldest tree leaving this piece of land untouched by humanity for hundreds of years.

After an unresolved meeting with her mother, Sui decides to look for her father´s roots in South Korea. She ends up on the Island of Marado; a matriarchal society where women make a living of diving for pearls.

ORIGINS is a story about a family of three that separates and travels into the world to find peace with themselves and each other. An adventurous tale of the love and pain that separates, but also connects a family. About the feeling of not belonging, and the search for a meaningful life.

Eva Tind’s Origins is written with humour, wisdom, warmth and a touch of magic.

(...) There is something alluring and quite enchanting, almost magical, to this book, and you are pulled into the narrative and its powerful swim through three people's origins (...) Eva Tind's characters observe the world with a velvet soft, scrutinizing eye that looks at the core of existence. There is great beauty in this narrative, and especially the portraits of Miriam and her visionary artworks are fascinating and magnificently done

5/6, Nordjyske Stiftstidende, Denmark

Eva Tind has a wonderful language and a liberating, playful approach to her three main characters

Finansavisen, Denmark

(...) Eva Tind has once again written a beautiful, touching and impressive book (...) I feel with Eva Tind's work, like I do with Siri Hustvedt and Josefine Klougart: No matter what they write about - they do it so aesthetically that it by definition becomes a pleasure reading

Litteratursiden.dk, Denmark

Origins is a liberating, atypical, strongly outgoing and engaging humanistic, feminist and idealistic novel on abandonment traumas, family communities and other forms of community, love, cynicism, reconciliation and chronology of death. Eva Tind accelerates her narrative story in soft jerks and confirms herself as a wild, discreet and unique author

Weekendavisen, Denmark

(...) Eva Tind writes with energy, humor and cheekiness (...)
Refined, intelligent, elegant (...)
Such a beautiful novel.

5/6, Politiken, Denmark

(...) There is an openness in the novel, for mysterious coincidences, for something you can call fate or instinct and to accept learning from other cultures (...)

Dagbladet Information, Denmark

I love Kai and how Eva Tind can brighten up an eternal theme and make it live as strong as she does.

5/6, Horsens Folkeblad, Denmark


Eva Tind's “Origins” is a balancing act of esotericism, mysticism, self-discovery and identity. Easy to read, rich in dialogue and very topical.

Buchkultur, Germany


In long, forthright dialogues, Tind's characters negotiate questions of identity and belonging. In addition, poetic observations of nature play a major role in this novel by an award-winning Danish author. (...) once you have left the solid ground of the probable and drifted beneath the surface, a tale with the colorfulness of a coral reef unfolds.

Nora Deetje Leggeman, Logbuch Editorial, Germany


Eva Tind is already a star in her native Denmark, but only now is her first novel being published in German. “Origins” is about a nuclear family that lives apart most of the time. (…)A novel about unquenched longing and the search for the "origin" of all existence.

Look! wienlive, Germany


In her book “Origins” the Danish author Eva Tind embarks on a spiritual search for identity. (…) Eva Tind's family novel on parenthood, adoption and relationships is told alternately from the perspective of Sui, Kai and Miriam. In doing so, the author alternates linguistically between pointed styles, which provides humorous undertones, especially in the dialogues, and expressive poetry.

Wiener Zeitung, Germany