Year

In contemporary Norwegian fiction Tomas Espedal's work stands out as uniquely bound up with the author's personal experiences. His first book <i>Tramp</i> introduced us to the wanderer Tomas; <i>Against Art</i> told us how a boy approaches art and eventually becomes a writer; <i>Against Nature</i> examined love's labor--the job of writing; and in <i>Bergerners</i> he is torn between his love for his home town and what lies beyond. Now in <i>The Year</i> 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? <p/> Written as a long poem <i>The Year</i> is Espedal's riveting stream of consciousness--profound edgy sometimes manic but always intensely intimate. <br>