HACKER SAFE certified sites prevent over 99.9% of hacker crime.
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE...
Mister Pip
Mister Pip
by Lloyd Jones
Comfort: A Journey through Grief
Comfort: A Journey through Grief
by Ann Hood
Tree of Smoke: A Novel
Tree of Smoke: A Novel
by Denis Johnson
RELATED AISLES

Ron Rash Read the original essay by Ron Rash and save 30% on Serena.

Serena $17.46
Hardcover Add to Cart



 
Ships free on qualified orders.
$14.00
TRADE PAPER, NEW
Ships in 1 to 3 days
Add to Wishlist
Qty Store Section
9 AirportLiterature- A to Z
2 BeavertonLiterature- A to Z
6 BeavertonFeatured Titles- Staff Picks
1 BeavertonFeatured Titles- Bestsellers
8 BurnsideLiterature- A to Z
21 BurnsideFeatured Titles- General
6 HawthorneLiterature- A to Z
1 HawthorneFeatured Titles- General
25 Local Warehouse Literature- A to Z
25 Remote Warehouse Literature- A to Z
Hide store locations


Out Stealing Horses: A Novel
by Per Petterson

Out Stealing Horses: A Novel Cover

About This Book

ISBN13: 9780312427085
ISBN10: 0312427085
All Product Details

Awards

Winner of the 2007 IMPAC Dublin Award
A Time Magazine Best Book of the Year
Named one of the 10 best books of the year by the New York Times Book Review
back to top

Powells.com Staff Pick

As a 67-year-old, Trond moves to an isolated part of Norway to live out the rest of his life quietly. After meeting his closest neighbor, he is forced to confront things from his youth that he'd spent years avoiding. Petterson writes beautifully of inner and outer struggles, of confusion, pain, and paths we can choose to go down or not. While Trond's voice is very matter-of-fact and Petterson is straightforward in his telling, there are layers that continue to be pulled back until the last page. This story is specific to time and place, but it is also an everyman's tale of love, death, loss, and time continuing on.
Recommended by Brodie, Powells.com

How we translate our past actions and experiences is at least as important as those actions and experiences themselves. Out Stealing Horses, itself superbly translated from the Norwegian, follows the arc of Trond Sander's life as he reflects during a quiet retirement on the violent summer that marked his coming of age. Forced to confront a long-avoided past, he finally deliberates on the adolescent loss, aching beauty, and harrowing grief that underpinned his adulthood. With finely drawn characters, a stark natural setting, and haunting minimalist prose, this quiet, powerful, and spare novel of acceptance is a meditative tale for all.
Recommended by Jason W., Powells.com

Hailed by critics across the globe, showered with awards, Out Stealing Horses is a book that true lovers of the written word will hold close to their hearts. With its captivating prose and characters who burrow under your skin and refuse to come out, Per Petterson's haunting, elegiac novel is so good, you'll want to buy multiple copies so you can always have one for yourself, no matter how many friends want to borrow it (and they will!).
Recommended by Hank, Powells.com

Review-a-Day   (What is Review-a-Day?)

"It's a masculine and spare story, and Petterson tells it in sentences stripped of emotion and literary pretense....The style befits not only the stark Norwegian landscape, but it's perfectly befitting a man as emotionally distant as Trond." Peter Martin, Esquire (read the entire Esquire review)

Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments:

Out Stealing Horses has been embraced across the world as a classic, a novel of universal relevance and power. Panoramic and gripping, it tells the story of Trond Sander, a sixty-seven-year-old man who has moved from the city to a remote, riverside cabin, only to have all the turbulence, grief, and overwhelming beauty of his youth come back to him one night while he's out on a walk. From the moment Trond sees a strange figure coming out of the dark behind his home, the reader is immersed in a decades-deep story of searching and loss, and in the precise, irresistible prose of a newly crowned master of fiction.

Review:

"Award-winning Norwegian novelist Petterson renders the meditations of Trond Sander, a man nearing 70, dwelling in self-imposed exile at the eastern edge of Norway in a primitive cabin. Trond's peaceful existence is interrupted by a meeting with his only neighbor, who seems familiar. The meeting pries loose a memory from a summer day in 1948 when Trond's friend Jon suggests they go out and steal horses. That distant summer is transformative for Trond as he reflects on the fragility of life while discovering secrets about his father's wartime activities. The past also looms in the present: Trond realizes that his neighbor, Lars, is Jon's younger brother, who 'pulls aside the fifty years with a lightness that seems almost indecent.' Trond becomes immersed in his memory, recalling that summer that shaped the course of his life while, in the present, Trond and Lars prepare for the winter, allowing Petterson to dabble in parallels both bold and subtle. Petterson coaxes out of Trond's reticent, deliberate narration a story as vast as the Norwegian tundra. (June)" Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

Review:

"This short yet spacious and powerful book...reminds us of the careful and apropos writing of J. M. Coetzee, W. G. Sebald and Uwe Timm." Thomas McGuane, New York Times

Review:

"The novel's incidents and lush but precise descriptions...are on a par with those of Cather, Steinbeck, Berry, and Hemingway, and its emotional force and flavor are equivalent to what those authors can deliver, too." Booklist

Review:

"Haunting, minimalist prose and expert pacing give this quiet story from Norway native Petterson an undeniably authoritative presence." Kirkus Reviews

Review:

"Petterson captures perfectly the flavor of adolescence." Cleveland Plain Dealer

Review:

"American readers should feel fortunate to have this beautiful translation of Petterson's work; finally, we are given the opportunity to step inside his graceful, deeply felt universe." Minneapolis Star Tribune

Review:

"Petterson has established his reputation abroad, winning several international prizes...but he deserves critical acclaim here as well. Highly recommended for all fiction collections." Library Journal

Review:

"[R]emarkable....Now and then a book comes along that deserves the label 'classic.' Out Stealing Horses is in that class, a rough woodcut that portrays the very mystery of life itself." Dallas Morning News

Synopsis:

An early morning adventure out stealing horses leads to the tragic death of one boy and a resulting lifetime of guilt and isolation for his friend, in this moving tale about the painful loss of innocence and of traditional ways of life that are gone forever.

Synopsis:

Out Stealing Horses has been embraced across the world as a classic, a novel of universal relevance and power. Panoramic and gripping, it tells the story of Trond Sander, a 67-year-old man who has moved from the city to a remote, riverside cabin, only to have all the turbulence, grief, and overwhelming beauty of his youth come back to him one night while he's out on a walk. From the moment Trond sees a strange figure coming out of the dark behind his home, the reader is immersed in a decades-deep story of searching and loss, and in the precise, irresistible prose of a newly crowned master of fiction.
back to top

About the Author

Per Petterson is the author of five novels, including In the Wake and To Siberia. Out Stealing Horses has won the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, and the Norwegian Booksellers' Prize. A former librarian and bookseller, Petterson lives in Oslo, Norway.
back to top

What Our Readers Are Saying

Add a comment for a chance to win!
Average customer rating based on 3 comments:
suze, June 18, 2008 (view all comments by suze)
This has been my favorite book of the year. Petterson has the ability to invoke the most heart-felt emotion in the clearest, most concise way.
Was this comment helpful? | Yes | No
(7 of 10 readers found this comment helpful)
report this comment
mazahn44, May 24, 2008 (view all comments by mazahn44)
Both the subject and the style of this book had me entranced.I read it through in most of a day, and yet wanted to read slowly to savor the way Petterson described feelings and events. Several pages about the father-son not verbally communicating, then finally briefly hugging are so moving that I plan to read them to my grown son, who is too busy to read much himself.
Was this comment helpful? | Yes | No
(6 of 11 readers found this comment helpful)
report this comment
michiganreader, March 25, 2008 (view all comments by michiganreader)
A stunning, beautiful book. The author presents landscape that has a presence like character, separating (barely) the main characters' history, secret lives, and future. Wry humor and truthful sadness. The best work of fiction I've read in 2008.
Was this comment helpful? | Yes | No
(6 of 10 readers found this comment helpful)
report this comment
View all 3 comments
back to top

Product Details

ISBN:
9780312427085
Author:
Petterson, Per
Publisher:
Picador USA
Translator:
Born, Anne
Subject:
Literary
Subject:
Norway
Subject:
Social isolation
Copyright:
2008
Edition Description:
Reprint ed.
Publication Date:
April 29, 2008
Binding:
Paperback
Language:
English
Pages:
238
Dimensions:
8.24x5.54x.69 in. .55 lbs.
back to top