Written by: Ljiljana Maletin Vojvodić //

How much does family shape our identity and influence our choices? And is everything really as it seems at first glance? These are some of the questions explored in Modern Family (En moderne familie) by Norwegian author Helge Flatland (b. 1984), which was published in Serbian translation (Moderna porodica) by Geopoetika in 2025.

The story of A Modern Family begins in Rome, where a Norwegian family has gathered to celebrate the father’s 70th birthday. Along with the celebrant and his wife, their adult children arrive: Liv, a journalist; Ellen, a media adviser, a few years younger; and Hakon, the youngest and “favorite” of the family. Joining them are Liv’s husband and children, as well as Ellen’s partner, while Hakon arrives alone.

Unlike the sunny skies of Gardermoen, from which they departed, Rome is rainy. But the weather is not what poses the real challenge. Unexpectedly, the parents announce that after 40 years of marriage, they have decided to divorce. The siblings’ reactions to this news are explored through different narrative perspectives, with Liv, Ellen, and Hakon as the storytellers, while their partners and parents remain “voiceless.” This choice leaves readers without those additional perspectives, but including too many voices might have disrupted the novel’s structure.

The divorce drives the story forward, yet it also provides a framework for exploring significant questions about family, partnership, and individual identity. Themes include life as a couple, closeness and trust, unmet expectations, “the search for someone who will give you everything and be everything,” shifts in family dynamics, sweeping problems under the rug, parenthood, navigating expected social and gender roles, the institutionalization of love, the need for control, power dynamics, the balance between “freedom” and “attachment,” differing notions of marriage and liberty, fear of monogamy, imitating one’s parents’ life, boundaries between parents and children, guilt, partner choice, struggles over having children, empathy, care and comfort, growing up, maturing, and aging.

Cultural references root the story in a distinct urban setting, following middle-class intellectuals who live in a well-functioning society. Everyday details pepper the text: Buffalo sneakers, Canada Goose jackets, Bose headphones, Lip Maximizer gloss, Diamond Glow foundation, as well as philosophical and social nods, such as the partnership of Simone de Beauvoir and Sartre, “self-imposed social media quarantine,” and people who “always bore others with long monologues, interrupt, adore the sound of their own voice, and feel compelled to ask a meaningless question, even when everyone else is ready to leave.”

The novel raises profound questions, not so much about others, but about oneself: about personal choices, self-imposed roles and expectations, and interpersonal relationships we often struggle to read. In many ways, it is a text of self-reflection, showing that all our searching, losing, and questioning are natural parts of (modern) family life and of liminal, fluid identities, whether we live in Scandinavia or Serbia.

At the same time, it reminds us that things are not always as they seem.

Despite its universal themes, the novel can also be read from an imagological perspective, particularly in line with what Miloš Crnjanski once described as ‘literature about mother, father, and marriage.’ Broadly speaking, the subtext carries a Bergman-esque sensibility, and the family dynamics at the beginning even slightly recall Thomas Vinterberg’s Celebration.

En moderne familie by Helge Flatland, a Norwegian author who studied Scandinavian languages and literature at the University of Oslo, was first published in 2017. It has sold over 100,000 copies, won the Norwegian Booksellers’ Association Prize (Bokhandlerprisen), and became a bestseller. This is also Flatland’s first book published in English, while the Serbian translation (Moderna porodica) was completed by Jelena Vojinović.