In The Wake

Description

A powerful and heart-rending novel based on Per Petterson's personal tragedy of losing many of his family in the sinking of the Estonia.By the winner of both the IMPAC Award and the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. Early one morning Arvid finds himself standing outside the bookshop where he used to work, drunk, dirty, with two fractured ribs, and no idea how he came to be there. He does not even recognise his face in the mirror. It is as if he has dropped out of the flow of life. Slowly, uncontrollably, the memories return to him, and Arvid struggles under the weight of the tragedy which has blighted his life - the death of his parents and younger siblings in an accident six years previously. At times almost unbearably moving, In the Wake is nonetheless suffused with unexpected blessings- humour, wisdom, human compassion, and a sense of the perpetual beauty of the natural world. By the winner of both the IMPAC Award and the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize.

Per Petterson was born in Oslo in 1952 and worked for several years as an unskilled labourer, a bookseller, a writer and a translator until he made his literary debut in 1987 with the short story collection Ashes in my Mouth, Sand in my Shoes, which was widely acclaimed by critics. He made his literary breakthrough in 2003 with the novel Out Stealing Horses, which has been translated into 40 languages so far and won many prizes, including the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize.

Outstanding... Almost every paragraph of his poet's prose is informed by an awareness of the precariousness of life * Times Literary Supplement * A masterpiece... Powerful...compelling...stunning and deeply moving... It's exactly the kind of novel we need right now -- John Burnside * Scotland on Sunday * Exquisite * Independent * Delineates with powerful delicacy the struggle to bear the unbearable * Independent on Sunday *