Ceci n'est pas nous

A mother. A home. A disappearance. An ordinary family teeters on the brink. The place that once offered protection becomes a source of fracture. At the center, the mother begins to crack: “This isn’t me. ” To survive, she dissociates. The home remains, but the “we” fades away. A journey through absence and solitude at the very heart of the home.

There is the mother, the father, the daughter, and then the son—all at once present and gone. A table, breakfast, mundane phrases. And beneath it all, the abyss. What once served as a refuge becomes a closed-off space, silence, suffocation. The family is swept away by the waves of its grief. It dissolves into a flood of powerful yet futile words, which set the stage for infinite solitude. What remains of “us” when we no longer feel real?

Winner of the 2023 Ibsen Prize, Monica Isakstuen blurs the boundaries between grief and joy, nightmare and reality. The characters drift between the present, memories, and projections—carried along by writing that moves forward in bursts and silences, until it gives voice to what can no longer be named. A unique universe that evokes Jon Fosse in its ability to house the unbearable within the most ordinary of settings.