Out Stealing Horses

Like chocolate ganache, delicious, concentrated, dark (like a Norwegian forest, not film noir) and so rich it doesn't take much. This thoughtful novel set at the tail end of WWII in Norway is a quiet, yet startling gem. Portrays a young teenage boy whose father has taken him to summer at a cabin in the woods on the Swedish border. In addition to the nostalgic look at traditional Norway as it was till say, the nineties, he takes you inside the heads of the characters, letting you hear them breath. Mysteries unfold in the dark forest, as the boy returning to the cabin as an old man recollects and begins to comprehend some of the mystifying events of that summer.

We were going out stealing horses. That was what he said, standing at the door to the cabin where I was spending the summer with my father. I was fifteen. It was 1948 and oneof the first days of July.

Trond's friend Jon often appeared at his doorstep with an adventure in mind for the two of them. But this morning was different. What began as a joy ride on "borrowed" horses ends with Jon falling into a strange trance of grief. Trond soon learns what befell Jon earlier that day--an incident that marks the beginning of a series of vital losses for both boys.

Set in the easternmost region of Norway, Out Stealing Horses begins with an ending. Sixty-seven-year-old Trond has settled into a rustic cabin in an isolated area to live the rest of his life with a quiet deliberation. A meeting with his only neighbor, however, forces him to reflect on that fateful summer.

PER PETTERSON has written five novels, which have established his reputation as one of Norway’s best fiction writers. Out Stealing Horses won the Norwegian Booksellers Prize, the Critics Award for best novel, and the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize.

“Petterson’s spare and deliberate prose has astonishing force.” —The New Yorker

“A gripping account of such originality as to expand the reader’s own experience of life.” —The New York Times Book Review

 

“Out Stealing Horses looks like a charming but modest chamber-piece. In retrospect—and this is a novel that strikes deep and lingers long—it feels more like some shattering literary symphony.” —The Independent

“A . . . miracle of a book.” —The Irish Times

Publisher: Picador
Distributor: MPS
Publication Date: 04-29-2008
Pages: 256
Measurements: 8.260in X 6.470in X 0.725in