To new readers, velkommen! For the past three years, Nordiska has hosted its own book club for fellow Nordic reading enthusiasts to connect and be in community with one another virtually. We invite you to expand your Nordic reading repertoire and discuss a variety of written works with us the last Thursday of each month.
Thank you to all those who were able to join us last month for our fantastic discussion on the historical fiction novel The End of Drum-Time (2023) by Hanna Pylväinen. For March we will travel from Sápmi to Norway, reading Out Stealing Horses (2003) by Per Petterson.
This Month’s Pick: Out Stealing Horses
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 one of the first days of July (Petterson).
Per Petterson is an accomplished Norwegian author nominated for the The Nordic Council’s Literature Prize. His first critically acclaimed novel is Out Stealing Horses which won the prestigious The Norwegian Critics Prize for Literature and the Booksellers’ Best Book of the Year Award.
This novel follows 67-year-old Trond Sander as he moves from the city to retire to an isolated cabin. In the calm and isolation, he reflects on his eventful life when his childhood friend unexpectedly shows up on his doorstep.
Referencing the frequent flashbacks in the novel, Thomas McGuane praises Petterson’s writing in his New York Times review:
This doppelgänger effect and other kinds of mirroring are part of the ingenuity of the narrative, which passes back and forth in time with such structural assurance and isometric tightness that the continuity is undisturbed. Even the title, “Out Stealing Horses,” serves as both the announcement of an adolescent prank and a password for the dangerous activity of the resistance. A fairly short novel with a timescape of half a century that seems to have left out nothing important is a bit of a miracle. I can’t see how exegetes, excited by unpacking fraught outcomes, can pry this one apart (McGuane).
In addition to receiving critical acclaim, Out Stealing Horses was also adapted into a feature-length film by the same title in 2019. The movie stars the Hollywood famous Swedish actor, Stellan Skarsgård, and is available to steam if you are interested in seeing it as well.
Virtual Book Club Meeting Information
We will be meeting to discuss this work via Zoom on Thursday March 28th at 6:00pm PST. You can find the Zoom invitation link here to register for the meeting ahead of time and/or keep a look out on our social media sites for an invitation. The passcode to join zoom is “nordiska“.
You can purchase your copy of Out Stealing Horses on Nordiska’s website by following the above links, or come and visit us in historic downtown Poulsbo. As a thank you for purchasing your book with us, Nordiska is offering a 15% discount on the book club pick of the month by using the code: bookclub22. Happy reading!
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