Flat lay of Scandinavian fiction books against textiles.

Vintage_Scandi_fiction_reading_list_2022

Reading lists

10 must-read Scandinavian novels

Echoland

Petterson's debut novel, about growing up and rancorous family life, published in English for the first time

Petterson's debut novel, published in English for the first time.Twelve-year-old Arvid and his family are on holiday, staying with his grandparents on the coast of Denmark. Dimly aware of the tension building between his mother and grandmother, Arvid is on the cusp of becoming a teenager: feeling awkward in his own skin, but adamant that he can take care of himself. 
 
As Arvid cycles down to the beach with its view of the lighthouse, he meets Mogens, an older boy who lives nearby, and together they set out to find fresh experiences in this strange new world. Echoland is a breathtaking read, capturing the unique drift of childhood summers, filled with unarticulated anxiety.

A compelling mix of fable with the day-to-day account of a working-class boy… It is hard to think of a novel that so precisely and vividly conveys the pain and disorientation of puberty

Is there a living writer better at conveying the disconcerting relationship between time and memory?... There is pleasure, too, in watching Petterson shift through the gears from pleasure to unease in one of those gloriously sinuous sentences that have become something of a trademark

It packs a powerful punch… A clear-cut jewel of nameless dread and nagging anxiety: Scandinavian gloom par excellence.

His eerily terse prose luxuriates in the hazy strangeness of the Danish landscape and is particularly brilliant at nailing adolescence as an inchoate, restless state in which life is felt much more fiercely than it is understood.

Like an old photograph, it illuminates everything to a sudden point of clarity… Petterson’s writing is so evocative of life on the cusp of becoming a teenager that when I close the book, I go back to the beginning and I re-read… Echoland is a novel that tastes of the sea and the sun and of frightening and beautiful thunderstorms.

Per Petterson was born in Oslo in 1952 and worked for several years as an unskilled labourer and a bookseller. He has received the prestigious Nordic Council Literature Prize and, on multiple occasions, the Brage Prize, the Norwegian Critics Prize for Literature and the Booksellers' Best Book of the Year Award for his many celebrated novels, such as In the Wake, I Curse the River of Time and I Refuse. Petterson made his literary breakthrough in 2003 with Out Stealing Horses, which in English translation won the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. It has been published in fifty languages and was an international bestseller.

Petterson’s debut novel, published in English for the first time 
 
Twelve-year-old Arvid and his family are on holiday, staying with his grandparents on the coast of Denmark. Dimly aware of the tension building between his mother and grandmother, Arvid is on the cusp of becoming a teenager: feeling awkward in his own skin, but adamant that he can take care of himself. 
 
As Arvid cycles down to the beach with its view of the lighthouse, he meets Mogens, an older boy who lives nearby, and together they set out to find fresh experiences in this strange new world. Echoland is a breathtaking read, capturing the unique drift of childhood summers, filled with unarticulated anxiety.

I Refuse

I refuse to compromise. 
 
I refuse to forgive. 
 
I refuse to forget. 
 
The major new novel from the author of Out Stealing Horses

An extraordinarily humane work…I Refuse will lodge in the heart and remain there

An exquisite story of a friendship formed and lost in a twist of fate

A poignant novel about the bonds forged and broken between friends and family members

A poignant, melancholic novel about the bonds forged and broken between friends and family members

Relentless, often shocking, but always satisfying

Relentless, often shocking, but always satisfying…telling each man’s story with brutal honesty and poignantly reinforcing a sense of existential malaise

The suspense isn't in the plot but in the prose, with its extraordinary looping sentences

Petterson’s signature technique lies in drawing the most zigzag line imaginable through narrative chronology but the effect is not of confusion, rather of a dense, layered complexity: it is the realist novel form’s mimetic faithfulness to life itself

A strenuous examination of how grief reverberates down the decades

A moving story of a group of lost souls, all struggling to make sense of their existence and exert some control over their lives

A brilliant study of memory, poetic in its juxtaposition of the vague with the precise, and of the ordinary with the life-defining

There is such elegant subtlety to this story

The Nobel laureate Patrick Modiano claims to have written a version of the same novel throughout his career; in a sense so has Petterson, but his anguished precision is such that no one should complain

Illuminated by a clear and insightful knowledge of what it means to be human... Petterson is really a masterful depictor of contemporary life

I Refuse is, despite its apparent realism, a nearly magical literary experience... It simply does not get much better than this

Petterson confirms his reputation as  Scandinavia's leading realist writer...the heart-rending contrast between power  and powerlessness, silence and speech is anchored in every word in these pages.  And in the reader’s soul

A masterpiece...at least as good as Out Stealing Horses... Intimate, shocking, demanding, raw

Norwegian literature's clearest shining star...a masterful novel about friendship, violence and destruction

A moving, complex short novel that is richer and more satisfying than most books several times its length

The suspense isn’t in the plot but the prose, with its extraordinary looping sentences

A harrowing account of childhood, of friendship, and of family disruption… Precise, scrupulous and emotionally intense… Peterson is a skilled storyteller… An admirable and honest novel.

From the author of the international bestseller Out Stealing Horses 
 
I refuse to compromise. 
 
I refuse to forgive. 
 
I refuse to forget. 
 
 
Tommy’s mother has gone. She walked out into the snow one night, leaving him and his sisters with their violent father. Without his best friend Jim, Tommy would be in trouble. But Jim has challenges of his own which will disrupt their precious friendship. 
 
A TLS and Guardian Book of the Year

Ashes in My Mouth, Sand in My Shoes

Per Petterson masters the art of writing simply about big subjects, and this is the heartwarming debut that brought the author of the highly acclaimed Out Stealing Horses to prominence

What makes Petterson’s storytelling so mesmerising is his measured, gentle restraint

Written with humour and great clarity, it’s a short but strikingly memorable read

Shot through with a tender, nostalgic quality

This debut outing (from 1987) by the Norwegian novelist tells a tale of childhood c.1960 with tender, bittersweet poignancy

If you loved Out Stealing Horses, you won’t be disappointed by his razor-sharp debut, which tells the story of Arvid’s childhood … The language is simple, beautiful and cleansed of literary affectation. There is not a single superfluous word

These father-son stories bring us the first meeting with one of Nordic literature’s most lovable characters, Arvid Jansen. A mixture of Alfons Åberg, Ingemar from My Life as a Dog and in part Oskar from The Tin Drum ... New readers should begin nowhere but here

There is both humour and tenderness in Per Petterson’s debut collection from 1987 … Petterson masters the art of writing simply of big subjects. As a reader, you have to read slowly and attentively to register everything, or read the book twice, which you gladly will

If you loved Out Stealing Horses, you won’t be disappointed by his razor-sharp debut… The language is simple, beautiful and cleansed of literary affectation. There is not a single superfluous word

There is both humour and tenderness… Petterson masters the art of writing simply of big subjects. As a reader, you have to read slowly and attentively to register everything, or read the book twice, which you gladly will

Dreamy and evanescent, [the stories] recall the opening pages of James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Per Petterson was born in Oslo in 1952 and worked for several years as an unskilled labourer and a bookseller. He made his literary breakthrough in 2003 with the prizewinning novel Out Stealing Horses, which has been published in forty-nine languages and won the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. Ashes in My Mouth, Sand in My Shoes is the sixth of his widely acclaimed works to be published in English.

Per Petterson masters the art of writing simply about big subjects, and this is the heartwarming debut that brought the author of the highly acclaimed Out Stealing Horses to prominence 
 
Arvid Jansen is a young boy who lives on the outskirts of Oslo. It’s the early sixties, his father works in a shoe factory and his Danish mother works as a cleaner. Arvid wets his bed at night and has nightmares about crocodiles, but slowly he is beginning to piece the world together. 
 
Per Petterson’s debut, in which he introduces Arvid Jansen to the world, is a delicate portrait of childhood in all its complexity, its wonders and confusions that will delight fans of Out Stealing Horses and new readers alike.

It's Fine By Me

The brilliant and moving story of a young man's life from the author of the prizewinning Out Stealing Horses.

·         an intriguing story featuring all of the Petterson quirks — charm, melancholy, loneliness, the rifts between parents and children, the bonds between siblings and friends

Beautifully written and understatedly uplifting, It's Fine By Me is an essential read

Beguiling and beautiful… a gripping and subtle coming-of-age story, ripe with melancholy… graceful and moving

Executed with not only a magical attention to detail but also with heart-swelling affection... page after page of clear, glitchless and truthful writing

A movingly observed story about growing up

A brilliantly vivid piece of storytelling

Atmospheric coming-of-age tale by one of Norway’s most renowned writers

The detail is perfect; the emotions are raw and beautifully conveyed

Petterson’s novel is a compelling study… Petterson’s beautifully spare prose subtly captures the effort that comes with this seeming inaction, this lack of fight, providing us with a lens through which we come to see Audun’s grim inertia as a paralyzing struggle to forget the past and get on with the task of living

Beautifully crafted but undeniably bleak; its spare prose, mournfully succinct characterisation and disorientating chronology deliver an edgy read

Per Petterson was born in Oslo in 1952 and worked for several years as an unskilled labourer, a bookseller, a writer and a translator until he made his literary debut in 1987 with the short story collection Ashes in my Mouth, Sand in my Shoes, which was widely acclaimed by critics. He made his literary breakthrough in 2003 with the prizewinning novel Out Stealing Horses, which has been translated into forty-nine languages so far and won many prizes. His second novel To Siberia was published to critical acclaim in 2008. 
 
Don Bartlett lives in Norfolk and works as a freelance translator of Scandinavian literature. He has translated, or co-translated, Norwegian novels by Lars Saabye Christensen, Roy Jacobson, Ingvar Ambjørnsen, Kjell Ola Dahl, Gunnar Staalesen, Pernille Rygg and Jo Nesbo.

Audun is the only one of his family who remains with his mother in working-class Oslo. He delivers newspapers when he is not in school and talks for hours about Jack London and Ernest Hemingway with his best friend – but there are some things Audun won’t talk about. Stories about his family, the weeks he spent living in a couple of cardboard boxes, and the day of his little brother's birth, when his drunken father fired three shots into the ceiling. 
 
A beautiful and disquieting coming-of-age story from the winner of the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize and the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.

I Curse the River of Time

A haunting literary masterpiece by the bestselling and prize-winning author of Out Stealing Horses

Per Petterson is a profoundly gifted novelist

Tight-lipped with one another, his characters open their hearts to the reader, making us witnesses to their most private selves. He makes the reader lean in, out of the wind, to listen closely.... Petterson has the ability to be simultaneously restrained and terribly tender...Extraordinary skill... There is a quality that I can only call charm, or something like charm, to Petterson's essentially dark and lonely sensibility.

Petterson applies candour, sensitivity and humour to his intimate studies of life as lived by us, the ordinary majority, and the result is singular magic...resoundingly human...All the inevitability of life, its fragile glue and the doubts that stalk the survivors are summoned and considered in Petterson's candid, allusive fiction. There is no easy sentiment, only genuine emotional power...Tender, masterfully evocative

Spare, cool, precise prose...a powerful evocation of the difficulty of communication within families

I Curse the River of Time is a work of blackest tragicomedy, a novel as cold and scintillating and desolate as the northern winter landscapes that are its setting.

Per Petterson stands unsurpassed among contemporary writers for existential truth telling

He unpacks the folly and pain of the human condition, leaving space for wit

My new literary heartthrob is the Norwegian writer Per Petterson...his latest book...returns to a favourite character, Arvid Jansen, and follows his struggles to resolve his relationship with his dying mother, whose disappointment in her son strips him bare.

Shows Petterson's alter ego, Arvid Jansen, confronting his mother's terminal cancer, and recreates his indigent, often alienated youth in East Oslo with charitable humour.

Times Literary Supplement, Christmas round up

Per Petterson was born in Oslo in 1952 and worked for several years as an unskilled labourer, a bookseller, a writer and a translator until he made his literary debut in 1987 with the short-story collection Ashes in my Mouth, Sand in my Shoes, which was widely acclaimed by critics. He made his literary breakthrough in 2003 with the novel Out Stealing Horses, which has been translated into 40 languages so far and won many prizes, including the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize.

It is 1989 and all over Europe Communism is crumbling. Arvid Jansen is in the throes of a divorce. At the same time, his mother is diagnosed with cancer. Over a few intense autumn days, we follow Arvid as he struggles to find a new footing in his life, while everything around him is changing at staggering speed. As he attempts to negotiate the present, he remembers holidays on the beach with his brothers, his early working life devoted to Communist ideals, courtship, and his relationship with his tough, independent mother - a relationship full of distance and unspoken pain that is central to Arvid's life.

To Siberia

IMPAC Winner Per Petterson's second novel - the stark, poignant tale of the bond between a brother and sister.

A compassionate, moving but clear-eyed view of family relationships... Overwhelming emotional power

One of the past decade's most moving novels

Beautifully written....wistfully sad... Petterson is a writer of great talent and originality

The past and present collide almost violently, and it all sneaks up on you in a way that makes you catch your breath

In the bitter cold of Danish Jutland, where the sea freezes over and the Nazis have yet to invade, a young girl dreams of one day going on a great journey to Siberia, while her beloved brother Jesper yearns for the warmer climes of Morocco. Their home, with a pious mother who sings hymns all day and a silent father, is as cold as their surroundings. But the unshakeable bond between brother and sister creates a vital warmth which glows in spite of the chill and the dark clouds that threaten to overtake their dreams.

Per Petterson

Ingvild Burkey

Petterson's spare and deliberate prose has astonishing force

Petterson is a profoundly gifted novelist

Reading a Petterson novel is like falling into a northern landscape painting-all shafts of light and clear palpable chill

Subtly incisive . . . Clean sentence after clean sentence, Petterson conveys both the melancholy and the demi-pleasurable sensation of being fundamentally untethered.

Readers will find that they're in the hands of a master whose quiet, unforgettable voice leaves you yearning to hear more.

Per Petterson stands unsurpassed among contemporary writers for existential truth-telling.

By the author of the international bestseller Out Stealing Horses

A tender portrait of grief, fatherhood and a life going to pieces from the bestselling author. 
 
'Vivid and moving... It would be hard to find a better writer than Petterson' Irish Times 
 
In 1992 Arvid Jansen is thirty-eight, divorced and paralysed by grief. More than a year has passed since the tragic accident that took his parents and two of his brothers. 
 
Existence has become a question of holding on to a few firm things. Loud, smoky bars, whisky, records, company for the night and taxis home. Or driving his Mazda into the stunning, solitary landscape outside of Oslo, sleeping in the car when his bed is an impossible place to be. 
 
Adrift and inept, Arvid feels his life unravelling. Is there any redemption for a man in his situation? 
 
'Per Petterson writes about masculinity as well as anyone' Torrey Peters 
 
'A rare insight into male vulnerability' Evening Standard

Per Petterson

Praise for Men in My Situation

Petterson's spare and deliberate prose has astonishing force

Petterson is a profoundly gifted novelist

Is there a living writer better at conveying the disconcerting relationship between time and memory?... There is pleasure, too, in watching Petterson shift through the gears from pleasure to unease in one of those g ...

Petterson's spare and deliberate prose has astonishing force

Petterson is a profoundly gifted novelist

Is there a living writer better at conveying the disconcerting relationship between time and memory?... There is pleasure, too, in watching Petterson shift through the gears from pleasure to unease in one of those g ...

Petterson's spare and deliberate prose has astonishing force

Petterson is a profoundly gifted novelist

Is there a living writer better at conveying the disconcerting relationship between time and memory?... There is pleasure, too, in watching Petterson shift through the gears from pleasure to unease in one of those g ...

Books by Per Petterson

Articles featuring Per Petterson

10 must-read Scandinavian novels

Follow penguin

Follow ladybird

Follow puffin

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter