Isn’t that a great cover? This is an early 60s pocketbook edition (but my printing is from 1974) — part of a series of cheap but stylish editions that I’ve been collecting for a while. And that’s one reason I read this book now: I was thinking that I should start actually reading these books at some point.
I mean, I made a 3D Extravaganza Web Page for the books.
But I’m not sure… I’ve got so many new, crappy books to read — should I just drop that to read old, actually good books?
The second impetus towards reading this is that I see it mentioned on Twitter all the time. Which is so weird! I mean, this is a classic of Norwegian literature, so I should have read it yonks ago (but I haven’t). Instead all these random Americans are reading it? What?!
”The best Norwegian novel ever” Karl Ove Knausgaard
Yes, after the tremendous success of My Struggle, Knausgaard is using his powers for good and making people all over the world read this book from 1957.
But I mean — it was a commercial and critical success in Norway from the start — when the 1974 edition was published, 101K books had been sold.
And so… here we go.
And it’s fantastic! It’s so interesting, moving (bring several hankies) and edge-of-your-seat exciting and nerve-racking. I could barely put it down after I’d gotten started.
I give it 11 thumbs up.
After finishing it, I was curious how the translators had approached the book — it’s written in a kinda old-fashioned Norwegian. Norwegian has been through a whole bunch of reforms (all to the good), but it means that it’s “harder” to read a Norwegian book from 70 years ago than it is to read an English book from 110 years ago. But this was pretty old-fashioned even back in 1957. So I checked the Penguin edition… Which, by the way, has this totally misleading cover:
Kudos to the designer here! No, the protagonist is totally not a rugged viking…
Oh, yeah, back to the translation — it’s totally modern and plain. In a way, I’m guessing many Norwegians would prefer to read it in this translation than read the original text, really. Translation has one advantage — it gives the publishers a valid excuse to update the language, while if you do that within the same language, it’s a scandal or something.
Anyway, I’m glad I finally read this book. And I’ve got The Ice Castle, too, so perhaps I’ll read that in a while.
Fuglane (1957) by Tarjei Vesaas (buy new, 4.14 on Goodreads)