Graffiti 1

REES, Nigel

Christensen, Lars-Saabye

Ex-Libris

Growing up in sixties Oslo, Barnum lives with an extended, eccentric family and his older half-brother, Fred, who was conceived after the rape of their mother in the dying days of World War II. Barnum seems to have stopped growing and Fred, implicated in a tragedy that leaves a family member dead, becomes mute - only roused when he hears 'Living Doll' one time too many. The two half-brothers embark on their seperate courses, Fred becoming a boxer and Barnum a scriptwriter, and it is twenty-seven years before a fax from their dying mother offers Barnum the chance to see his brother again. This literary marvel tells the story of an ordinary Norwegian family, set apart by extraordinary family members, with unsentimental charm, exuberant comedy and devastating tragedy.

The Half Brother

Arcade Publishing

A jewel of modern Norwegian literature now hailed as Lars Saabye Christensen's crowning achievement - an intricate and utterly compelling narrative.
Christensen is one of Scandinavia's finest and most celebrated storytellers, who has devoted the best part of his career to writing about the city of his birth. As Oslo slowly emerges from a period of crippling austerity, Echoes of the City shows how small, almost imperceptible acts of kindness and compassion, and tiny shifts in fortune, can change the lives of many.
At the centre of the novel are Maj and Ewald Kristoffersen and their son Jesper, their lives closely entwined and overlapping with their neighbours' on Kirkeveien. When the butcher's son Jostein is knocked down in a traffic accident and loses his hearing, Jesper promises to be his ears in the world. The arrival of a long-awaited telephone is a major event for Maj and Ewald, and meanwhile their neighbour, recently widowed Fru Vik, tentatively takes up with the owner of the bookshop near the cemetery. The bar at Hotel Bristol becomes a meeting place for all of them - for Ewald and his advertising colleagues, for Fru Vik and her suitor, to the piano playing of hapless Enzo Zanetti, an immigrant down on his luck, who enables Jesper to discover his true passion.
The minutes of the local Red Cross meetings give an architecture to the narrative of so many lives and tell a story in themselves, bearing witness to the steady recovery of the community. Echoes of the City is a remarkably tender observation of the rhythms and passions of a city, and a particular salute to the resilience of its women. 
Translated from the Norwegian by Don Bartlett

Echoes of the City

Literature & Fiction

Literary

MacLehose Press

We've all stood on a street corner and let the city's lights and sounds pass by. What do we hear when we listen to the sounds of the city? What traces do they leave in us? The city and the streets are the same as before, but the people who emerge in Echoes of a City have never been seen before. At the centre are Ewald and Maj Kristoffersen, but their fates are closely interwoven with the streets they live on. Down the road a couple has a butcher's shop. They have a son, Jostein, who goes deaf after a traffic accident. Jesper, Ewald and Maj's son, promises to be his ears in the world. The butcher couple and the widow Mrs Vik have a telephone, but not the Kristoffersen family. Jesper takes piano lessons, Mrs Vik meets the widower Olaf Hall who runs the second-hand bookshop at the cemetery. His stepson, Bjørn Stranger, is the one who saves Jostein's life when he gets run over. There are few - if any - who can conjure up a time and place in a way that makes it alive for us here and now like Lars Saabye Christensen.

Contemporary

Quercus Publishing

Friendship: Echoes of the City II (Echoes of the City, 2)

Traces four generations of a family marked by the untimely birth of Fred, a misfit and boxer conceived during a devastating rape who forges an unusual friendship with his younger half-brother, Barnum. Winner of the Nordic Prize for Literature. 30,000 first printing.

The Half Brother: A Novel

Traces four generations of a family marked by the untimely birth of Fred, a misfit and boxer conceived during a devastating rape who forges an unusual friendship with his younger half-brother, Barnum. Winner of the Nordic Prize for Literature. Reprint.

Epic yet startlingly contemporary, this massive novel charts 50 years in the life of an unconventional Oslo family.

At the end of World War II, twenty-year-old Vera is brutally raped by an unknown assailant. From that rape is born a boy named Fred, a misfit who later becomes a talented boxer. Vera’s young son, Barnum, forms a special but bizarre relationship with his half brother, fraught with rivalry and dependence as well as love. “I should have been your father,” Fred tells Barnum, “instead of the fool who says he is.”It is Barnum, who is now a screenwriter with a fondness for lies and alcohol, who narrates his family’s saga. As he shares his family’s history, he chronicles generations of independent women and absent and flawed men whom he calls the Night Men. Among them is his father, Arnold, who bequeaths to Barnum his circus name, his excessively small stature, and a con man’s belief in the power of illusion.Filled with a galaxy of finely etched characters, this prize-winning novel is a tour de force and a literary masterpiece richly deserving of the accolades it has received.

United States

Arcade

Steven, Kenneth

Arcadia

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Books by Christensen, Lars-Saabye

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Christensen, Lars-Saabye. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Graffiti 1

The Half Brother

Echoes of the City

Echoes of the City

Friendship: Echoes of the City II (Echoes of the City, 2)

The Half Brother: A Novel

The Half Brother: A Novel

The Half Brother: A Novel

The Half Brother: A Novel

The Half Brother