Eyes of the Rigel
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- 59,00 kr
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- 59,00 kr
Publisher Description
The third novel in a historical trilogy that began with the International Booker shortlisted The Unseen
"Taken together, Jacobsen has given us an epic of Norway's experience of the first half of the 20th century that is subtle and moving" David Mills, Sunday Times
"Jacobsen can make almost anything catch the light . . . One of Norway's greatest writers on the working class" Times Literary Supplement
The journey had taken on its own momentum, it had become an autonomous, independent entity, she was searching for love, and was still happily unaware that truth is the first casualty of peace.
The long war is over, and Ingrid Barroy leaves the island that bears her name to search for the father of her child.
Alexander, the Russian captive who survived the sinking of prisoner ship the Rigel and found himself in Ingrid's arms, made an attempt to cross the mountains to Sweden. Ingrid will follow in his footsteps, carrying her babe in arms, the child's dark eyes the only proof that she ever knew him.
Along the way, Ingrid's will encounter collaborators, partisans, refugees, deserters, slaves and sinners, in a country that still bears the scars of defeat and occupation.
And before her journey's end she will be forced to ask herself how well she knows the man she is risking everything to find.
Translated from the Norwegian by Don Bartlett and Don Shaw
Don Bartlett is the acclaimed translator of books by Karl Ove Knausgård, Jo Nesbø and Per Petterson.
Don Shaw, co-translator, is a teacher of Danish and author of the standard Danish-Thai/Thai-Danish dictionaries.
With the support of the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Jacobsen completes his trilogy (after White Shadow) with this expressive story of a woman's search for her lover in post-WWII Norway. In summer 1946, Ingrid Barrøy takes her infant daughter, Kaja, from their small Norwegian island in search of Kaja's father Alexander, the former Russian prisoner of war who survived a terrible shipwreck in the previous volume. As Ingrid attempts to trace Alexander's movements in Sweden, she persuades people to share memories of the war that most would rather forget. She stays briefly with a shopkeeper who collaborated with the Germans, then with a woman who hid Alexander on her farm. Despite being given some misdirection and told he must have died, Ingrid trudges onward, sometimes doubling back, until she meets Henrik Axelsen, who narrowly survived a harrowing winter with Alexander. When Henrik shares troubling details about Alexander, Ingrid makes a consequential choice about her search. The translators inventively capture Ingrid's dialect ("An' thas knew this all th'taim") as well as the power of the tense interactions between the characters. This delicate account of yearning perfectly caps the strong series.