Synopses & Reviews
At the end of World War II, twenty-year-old Vera is brutally raped by an unknown assailant. From that rape is born a boy named Fred, a misfit who later becomes a talented boxer. Veras young son, Barnum, forms a special but bizarre relationship with his half brother, fraught with rivalry and dependence as well as love. “I should have been your father,” Fred tells Barnum, “instead of the fool who says he is.”
It is Barnum, who is now a screenwriter with a fondness for lies and alcohol, who narrates his familys saga. As he shares his familys history, he chronicles generations of independent women and absent and flawed men whom he calls the Night Men. Among them is his father, Arnold, who bequeaths to Barnum his circus name, his excessively small stature, and a con mans belief in the power of illusion.
Filled with a galaxy of finely etched characters, this prize-winning novel is a tour de force and a literary masterpiece richly deserving of the accolades it has received.
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"An ambitious book, Christensen has conflated the novel of ideas with a family saga, a coming-of-age novel, and 'a portrait of the artist as a young man.' . . . His inventiveness is astonishing."" San Francisco Chronicle
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"[An] enormous, challenging, life-affirming masterpiece." (starred review)" Kirkus Reviews
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"“Epic yet startling contemporary . . . This is a . . . marvelously rich novel steeped in European history and charged by present-day anxieties.”
" Publisher's Weekly
Synopsis
A gripping family saga that has been compared to Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections and winner of the Nordic countries’ Pulitzer Prize and a Village Voice Book of the Year.
Synopsis
A gripping family saga that has been compared to Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections and winner of the Nordic countries’ Pulitzer Prize and a Village Voice Book of the Year.
About the Author
Lars Saabye Christensen, one of Norway’s most acclaimed novelists, is the prize-winning author of nineteen novels as well as many short stories and poetry. His works have been published in the United States and throughout Europe, as well as Pakistan. He is the recipient of the Cappelen Prize, the Brage Prize, and the Nordic Council's Literature Prize.
Kenneth Steven is a translator, writer, and poet. His longest translation, The Half Brother, was long-listed for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize and short-listed for the international IMPAC Award. He often completes work for NORLA (Norwegian Literature Abroad).