Per Petterson on the NYT Bestseller list

Per Petterson is placed on the 16th place on the New York Times bestseller list for paperbacks this week! Very nice for Per Petterson!
Paperback Trade Fiction, Published: August 10, 2008
1. THE SHACK, by William P. Young. A man whose daughter was abducted is invited to an isolated shack, apparently by God.
2. WATER FOR ELEPHANTS, by [...]

Ida Elisabeth, by Sigrid Undset

(Oslo : Aschehoug, 1932, New York : Knopf, 1933.) Ida Elisabeth marries Frithjof, her teenage sweetheart. They get four children together, but only two of them live to grow up. Soon Ida Elisabeth discovers that she has married a real shirker of a man.
When Frithjof embarks on an affair with another woman, Ida Elisabeth [...]

The Redbreast, by Jo Nesbo

The Redbreast by Jo Nesbo won the Glass Key prize for the best Nordic crime novel when it was first published, and was subsequently voted Norway’s best crime novel. Jo Nesbo ( Nesbø in Norwegian) is a young, wonderfully gifted storyteller that increasingly is being noticed among crime book readers in the US and UK. [...]

Before You Sleep, by Linn Ullmann

While Before You Sleep was not viewed as controversial in Norway, American reviewers have regarded it as a “detailed and sexually frank novel.” Such labels aside, Before You Sleep is a great and interesting story of a Norwegian family, Blom, with strong and also somewhat eccentric women, that spans several generations. The story moves [...]

Giants in the Earth: A Saga of the Prairie, by Ole Edvart Rolvaag

I just recently found Giants in the Earth on the Internet, more or less by accident. It is a great book, wonderful even. Rolvaag (or Rølvåg or Rölvaag, depending) seems to be somewhat known among Norwegian-Americans, hardly known at all to Danish-Americans or Swedish-Americans, and known by only a very, very few in Norway and [...]

The Journey of Niels Klim to the World Underground, by Ludvig Holberg

The Danish-Norwegian writer Ludvig Holberg, (born Bergen, Norway 1684, died Sorø, Denmark 1754) was a prolific and entertaining writer, famous mostly for his extremely amusing, divine comedies (Jeppe on the Hill and Erasmus Montanus are probably the best known). However, he also wrote a story that may be considered one of the first science fiction [...]

Moment of Freedom, by Jens Bjorneboe

Moment of Freedom is the first book in the Bjorneboe trilogy known as History of Bestiality. The two other books are Powderhouse and The Silence.
This is a grand work. The anarchic Bjorneboe despised repression and repressive institutions, as well as authority. This trilogy is a broadly founded literary attack on the multiple foundations of repressive [...]

What I Loved, by Siri Hustvedt

Siri Hustvedt’s What I Loved is a wonderful novel, beautifully written, but also a very demanding book to read, intellectually as well as emotionally.
Siri Hustvedt is an American, but with Norwegian parents. She lives in New York, and is married to, and have a daughter with, the author Paul Auster. She has a Ph.D. in [...]

Black Seconds, by Karin Fossum

(Norwegian title: Svarte sekunder.)
In 2002 Karin Fossum published her sixth Sejer novel in Norwegian. This book, Black Seconds, is now released in English. So far Karin Fossum’s books have been extremely well received. And with Black Seconds, which is among her best books - well written, highly exciting, and with all the depth one expects from [...]

Out Stealing Horses, by Per Petterson

Cowboys in the Wild West stole horses. In Norway nobody steals horses, not today, not ever. I think. And I am Norwegian and definitely not a cowboy from the Wild West. Therefore, I never really liked the title of Per Petterson’s book. So I did the right thing. The only option open to me, really. [...]