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Recently Per Petterson was awarded the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award for his novel Out Stealing Horses; it is the world's largest literary prize for a single work of fiction published in English (including books translated from other languages). He has also been awarded the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize and two of the major Norwegian literary prizes (the Norwegian Critics Prize for Literature and the Booksellers' Best Book of the Year Award), and his novel was chosen by the editors of The New York Times Book Review as one of the ten best books of the year.
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Out Stealing Horses is Petterson's sixth book, confirming his stature among the most important writers in Norway today. His style is laconic, understated; like Hemingway, he's a master of dialogue, and what remains unsaid is of central importance. There is always more in his sentences than meets the eye. Above all, he's an intensely physical writer; Out Stealing Horses has that special quality that lets the reader smell the novel rather than just read it.
A theme that runs throughout Petterson's books is relationships between family members. In his highly acclaimed novel To Siberia (which was also nominated for the IMPAC Award), Petterson takes on the perspective of a girl, but more typically, as in Out Stealing Horses, he focuses on the relationship between a son and his father. This is of course a well-known theme in literature, all the way back to Homer and Sophocles (not to mention Holy Scripture), and yet Petterson manages to make it fresh. Even when I read all his books in succession, as I have done, I don't feel that I am getting simply more of the same; rather I'm being led deeper into the heart of the matter.
Petterson differs from many of his peers in contemporary Norwegian literature, who have their roots in the radical Left of the 1970s. Unlike Dag Solstad, for example— probably the most famous living writer in Norway today—Petterson hasn't written on explicitly "political" themes. Instead, he has stuck to big questions as they are worked out in everyday life, especially in the family setting.
One other bit of background worth mentioning: Petterson's worked for years in a famous bookstore in Oslo (called Tronsmo). In that connection he came to know many of the most important writers of the day, but he was a late starter in his own literary career, due to a combination of high ambitions and low self-esteem. Writing didn't come easily for him.
His first book, published in 1987, was a collection of linked short stories set in Oslo in the 1950s, mainly focusing on the little boy Arvid Jansen and his relationship with his dad. Arvid, who is to some extent autobiographical, has become a recurring figure in Petterson's subsequent books. Two of these novels (prior to Out Stealing Horses) have been translated into English. The girl portrayed in To Siberia is Arvid's mother, who, like Petterson's own mother, is Danish. And In the Wake recounts Arvid's loss of his parents, even as he celebrates his debut as an author. This too draws on Petterson's experience: in 1990, three years after his first book was published, he lost his mother and father, one of his brothers, and a cousin in the tragic fire on the ferry Scandinavian Star.
In the Wake, which was published in Norway in 2000, includes a small section that Arvid (the fictional author) writes, describing it as a "possible future." The very same section is the opening of Out Stealing Horses, originally published three years later. What this suggests is that Out Stealing Horses is "written by" Arvid, Petterson's principal recurring character, as he reflects on the loss of his parents.
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