Per Petterson
Author of Out Stealing Horses
About the Author
Per Petterson was born in Norway on July 18, 1952. He is a trained librarian and before becoming a full-time writer, he worked as a bookstore clerk, translator and literary critic. His first work, Aske i munnen, sand i skoa (Ash in His Mouth, Sand in His Shoe), a volume of short stories, was show more published in 1987. His other works include These are Ekkoland (1989), Det er greit for meg (1992), and To Siberia (1996). He has won numerous awards including the prestigious Norwegian literary prize Brageprisen for In the Wake (2000) and the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize in the UK, the Norwegian Booksellers' Prize, and the Norwegian Critics' Award for best novel for Out Stealing Horses (2003). (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Image credit: Per Petterson, Norwegian author. Photo by Wikipedia user GAD.
Works by Per Petterson
Wheelgun Buffalo 1 copy
Associated Works
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Birthdate
- 1952-07-18
- Gender
- male
- Occupations
- librarian
bookseller
translator
literary critic
novelist
unskilled labourer - Awards and honors
- Norwegian Booksellers' Prize (2003)
The Critics' Award (2003)
Brage Prize (2000 | 2008)
Nordic Council Literature Prize (2009)
Independent Foreign Fiction Prize (2006)
International Dublin Literary Award (2007) - Short biography
- Petterson's father, mother, brother and nephew died when a ferry caught fire on the overnight sailing from Oslo to Frederikshavn in northern Denmark (159 people lost their lives)....Sitting in the electricity-free extension to his white wooden house 60 miles south-east of Oslo, Petterson smiles at his last remark.The farmstead where Petterson and his wife Pia live with their sheep and chickens is reached by driving through a whitened landscape, across the Glomma river which, he tells visitors, separates the urban sphere from the "back bush". Asked the name of the area, he replies: "I say I live in the woods, near the Swedish border." The couple moved from the city a dozen years ago, with Pia's children from an earlier union. (It is also Petterson's second marriage.) "When we first came, it was so cold the duvet stuck to the wall." Now there is heating piped into each room and a cat or dog under every chair.
- Nationality
- Norway
- Birthplace
- Oslo, Norway
- Places of residence
- Oslo, Norway (birth)
- Map Location
- Norway
Members
Reviews
Trond Sander, at 67 years old, is a simple man living alone with his dog, Lyra, deep in the Norwegian woods. He likes the quiet. He loves the solitude. It's as if he has run away from memories. In reality, he has done just that. Trond lost his sister and wife in one month three years prior. That was when he stopped talking to people. His silence is profound until he meets a stranger in the woods near his cabin. Only this stranger carries the very memories Trond has been trying to escape. show more Lars is a member of a family with entangled deep tragedies and Trond knows them well. Petterson is able to move Trond from past to present with remarkable grace. Trond as a teenager versus Trond, the aging adult in Norway's breathtaking landscape. Like any good drama, there is violence, illicit love, abandonment, and atonement with surprises along the way. I hope the movie is as spectacular as the book. show less
Do brutal climate and harsh environs inevitably lead to such stories? Auden is a survivor. The question is whether he will escape as well as survive. This is a grim story of abuse, alcoholism, dead-end jobs, petty town mentalities. But above it is a level of joy for the reader in the lovely prose, the simple, minimal way in which Petterson does his work. And surely the one will transcend the other by the end leading to something like a happy future. Auden’s a reader and in his heart he’s show more a writer. Could the author really leave the hopes of this young man and the reader dashed?
Maybe. I’m not going to give that away. Suffice to say I read this with my heart in my mouth, during the course of today. It’s short and very difficult to put down.
Petterson’s on two out of two with me. show less
Maybe. I’m not going to give that away. Suffice to say I read this with my heart in my mouth, during the course of today. It’s short and very difficult to put down.
Petterson’s on two out of two with me. show less
"I'll have to go down there," I shouted. And before my father could say anything, I had jumped in and let myself skink until I stood on the riverbed. There I felt the current punch me in the back and pull at my arms, and I opened my eyes and saw the end of the trunk straight in front of me, got the loop over my head and fastened it where I wanted it to be. It all went so well I felt I could stand there a long time almost weightless and just hold my breath an keep hands around that log."
I was show more thinking about my instinctive, irrational, and immediate rating of four stars for Out Stealing Horses, which is immaculately written, at times moving, and has a pedigree of many international literary awards to make its case. I was thinking about a feminist reading of this novel, which is set primarily in the masculine world of postwar rural Norway, and depicts the male bonding over work (mainly cutting and hauling timber). There is a subtle but unmistakable hostility towards women; the main female character is the mother of the narrator's friend, who collaborates in the anti-Nazi underground and enters the male world of work, only to be seen as a potential competitor for the father's affections. There are other clues of misogyny: the narrator's neglect of his grown daughter, moving back to the countryside without leaving so much as a phone number, the harsh tone he uses with his mother on a trip to a small town in Sweden, the fact that his ex-wives are barely alluded to or even named.
The disappearance of Trond's father and the implied entry into the urban, female world of Oslo (as symbolized by the suit his mother buys for him at the end of the novel), is the precursor to the older Trond returning to the setting of his childhood memories with his father. There is a stereotype (heard on the old Prairie Home Companion show) of the Norwegian bachelor farmer on the plains of Minnesota and the Dakotas. Trond the elder is the pure distillation of this: a man who goes off to the country to die alone, away from the complications of society. show less
I was show more thinking about my instinctive, irrational, and immediate rating of four stars for Out Stealing Horses, which is immaculately written, at times moving, and has a pedigree of many international literary awards to make its case. I was thinking about a feminist reading of this novel, which is set primarily in the masculine world of postwar rural Norway, and depicts the male bonding over work (mainly cutting and hauling timber). There is a subtle but unmistakable hostility towards women; the main female character is the mother of the narrator's friend, who collaborates in the anti-Nazi underground and enters the male world of work, only to be seen as a potential competitor for the father's affections. There are other clues of misogyny: the narrator's neglect of his grown daughter, moving back to the countryside without leaving so much as a phone number, the harsh tone he uses with his mother on a trip to a small town in Sweden, the fact that his ex-wives are barely alluded to or even named.
The disappearance of Trond's father and the implied entry into the urban, female world of Oslo (as symbolized by the suit his mother buys for him at the end of the novel), is the precursor to the older Trond returning to the setting of his childhood memories with his father. There is a stereotype (heard on the old Prairie Home Companion show) of the Norwegian bachelor farmer on the plains of Minnesota and the Dakotas. Trond the elder is the pure distillation of this: a man who goes off to the country to die alone, away from the complications of society. show less
Sixty seven year old Trond has purchased an isolated, spare cabin in the Norwegian woods, planning to live the remainder of his life in solitude with his rescued dog, Lyra. As Trond fixes up his cabin and gets ready for the oncoming winter, his mind drifts back to the summer of his fifteenth year when he and his father, who he hasn’t seen in 50 years, were in a similar cabin for the summer. His closest neighbor is Lars who, he realizes soon after meeting, he knew during that summer.
This show more particular summer is pivotal for Trond, as he sees his father, his hero, as both a man of extreme stature as well as a man somewhat diminished. It is a summer filled with joys. It is around this time that he feels he has a singular bond with his father, one that his sister who remained at home for the summer in Oslo with their mother, cannot replicate. It is during this summer that he gets a glimpse of his father’s war-time Resistance activities as told to him by a neighbor, something his father would never talk about.
There is also tragedy during the summer as a young boy, his friend Jon’s younger brother, is accidently killed in a rifle accident and Trond sees his father with another woman. That summer is the last time Trond would see his father. He never came home.
The spectacular thing about Out Stealing Horses is its subtlety. Readers can visualize Trond in his winter wonderland, trudging through the snow with Lyra or cutting up a fallen birch tree with Lars. They can visualize fifteen year old Trond working with his father felling trees on his property, looking longingly at Jon’s mother as she brings food to the logging men. You can picture the river curving around the bend, flowing from Norway to Sweden back into Norway. All of this is done without blatant similes. It is done with wordsmithing and language and slow but steady writing that draws readers in. The book is also spectacular for what it doesn’t say–about Trond’s father, about Trond’s cabin, about Lars. There are hints, but the reader must ultimately decide for himself.
Out Stealing Horses (the title does have a meaning in the story, but I won’t tell you) won the 2007 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award as well as several other awards. Susan, who reads much more literary works than I do, suggested this book at the Brooklyn Book Festival and I’m glad because it is not “my genre” but it is so worth reading. show less
This show more particular summer is pivotal for Trond, as he sees his father, his hero, as both a man of extreme stature as well as a man somewhat diminished. It is a summer filled with joys. It is around this time that he feels he has a singular bond with his father, one that his sister who remained at home for the summer in Oslo with their mother, cannot replicate. It is during this summer that he gets a glimpse of his father’s war-time Resistance activities as told to him by a neighbor, something his father would never talk about.
There is also tragedy during the summer as a young boy, his friend Jon’s younger brother, is accidently killed in a rifle accident and Trond sees his father with another woman. That summer is the last time Trond would see his father. He never came home.
The spectacular thing about Out Stealing Horses is its subtlety. Readers can visualize Trond in his winter wonderland, trudging through the snow with Lyra or cutting up a fallen birch tree with Lars. They can visualize fifteen year old Trond working with his father felling trees on his property, looking longingly at Jon’s mother as she brings food to the logging men. You can picture the river curving around the bend, flowing from Norway to Sweden back into Norway. All of this is done without blatant similes. It is done with wordsmithing and language and slow but steady writing that draws readers in. The book is also spectacular for what it doesn’t say–about Trond’s father, about Trond’s cabin, about Lars. There are hints, but the reader must ultimately decide for himself.
Out Stealing Horses (the title does have a meaning in the story, but I won’t tell you) won the 2007 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award as well as several other awards. Susan, who reads much more literary works than I do, suggested this book at the Brooklyn Book Festival and I’m glad because it is not “my genre” but it is so worth reading. show less
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