Growing up among the fjords and mountains of Western Norway, Klara Hveberg loved to fill her pockets with sparkling stones from the beach. She played the violin, wrote poems and enjoyed juggling. As the world of literature seemed too scary, she sought refuge in the realm of mathematics, ending up with a doctoral degree in fractal geometry, perhaps the branch of mathematics closest in beauty to the visual arts.

When health problems forced her to quit her job as a research mathematician at the University of Oslo, she once again sought refuge – but this time in her love of writing. Unexpectedly, fractal geometry helped her compose a novel of love and loneliness saturated with poetry, music, painting, mathematics – and juggling. It tells the tale of two female mathematicians, Rakel Havberg and Sofia Kovalevskaya, separated by a century and united by their quest for somebody to lean their loneliness against.

Hveberg’s first novel "Lean your loneliness slowly against mine" has been described by the critics as "a beautiful love sonata in D minor", "a mathemagical debut" that "makes music out of mathematics and turns life into poetry", featuring "one of the most complex and interesting protagonists I have encountered". The novel was listed among the top 6 Norwegian titles in 2019 (by Adresseavisen), and has been sold to several countries, including the US, England, Germany, Korea and Poland.