Summer vacation is fast approaching. Ina will spend it with her mother, all fifty-four long days off, in a boring, unsightly residential neighborhood. Her classmates live in luxurious villas with large gardens, and go on vacation in the summer. On the last day of school, the homeroom teacher insists that they tell where and how they will spend their vacation. Everyone names one after another: in France, Dubai, America, Spain... Except for Vilmer, the new, outspoken boy in the class, who declares that he will stay home because his father is broke. When it is Ina's turn, a lie suddenly slips from her tongue. It will be in the south, in a luxurious hotel on a paradise beach. Her classmates laugh at her. Where in the south? The south is not a country, it is not a real place, they warn her.
A story about social differences, about friendship, imagination, love, showing off on social media, and the discovery that a paradise south can be created and found in the most unlikely places.
Marianne Kaurin (b. 1974) is a renowned Norwegian children's book editor and writer. Her novel In the South has won many awards, and in 2021, in its German translation, it received one of the most prestigious literary awards in the world, the highest German prize for young people's literature, the Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis. (taken from the general page of Založbe Zala)