The Year: A Novel [Hardcover]

In contemporary Norwegian fiction, Tomas Espedal’s work stands out as uniquely bound up with the author’s personal experiences. His first book,Tramp, introduced us to the wanderer Tomas;Against Arttold us how a boy approaches art and eventually becomes a writer;Against Natureexamined love’s labor—the job of writing; and inBergerners, he is torn between his love for his home town and what lies beyond. Now, inThe Year, we encounter the author’s struggle to reconcile his inner life with the external world, and the myriad forms of love, hate, loss, and death—both personal and literary—with the immutable pattern of time and the seasons. It is the journal of a year, a diary like no other. And suffusing it all are questions Petrarch asked: How do you live when the one you love is gone? And when your life force shifts from spring to autumn, how do you find the good death?
 
Written as a long poem,The Yearis Espedal’s riveting stream of consciousness—profound, edgy, sometimes manic, but always intensely intimate.
 Tomas Espedal is the author of several novels and prose collections, includingBergeners,Against Art,Against Nature, both published by Seagull Books.James Anderson’s literary translations from the Norwegian include Berlin Poplars, by Anne B. Ragde, Nutmeg, by Kristin Valla, and several books by Jostein Gaarder.