A major work of contemporary fiction from a "leading light of
international literature" (Publishers Weekly, starred review), Hanne
Ørstavik, whose last novel, Love, won the PEN Translation Prize.
A thought-provoking, existential novel - as Liv searches for meaning and
identity in her own life, she must find the words to connect, comfort
and lead others.
Liv, an intense and reticent theologian, moves to a bitterly cold
fishing village to take up a post as the church's new pastor following
the death of her friend, Kristiane. In the upper rooms of a large house
overlooking the fjord, Liv plans her sermons and studies the violent
interplay of Norway's Christian colonial past. She trails downstairs
into the apartment below for dinners and breakfasts with a widow and her
two children. As Liv becomes acquainted with the villagers and their own
private tragedies, memories bloom in passages that urgently question the
unpredictable bedrock of language, and the peculiar channels of imagined
experience as it might have been, if only there had been a different set
of words, or an outstretched hand.
The past mingles darkly with the present, cascading in chilling images:
a dog lying dead in the snowy plains, Kristiane's teeth flashing as she
laughs, a procession of singing, knife-carrying protesters curving along
a river's edge. Martin Aitken's translation of this extraordinary novel
rings with the brilliance and rigor of a master.
