The Indian Bride, by Karin Fossum

(First published in 2000, The Indian Bride is the US title, the book was published in the UK as Calling out for You.) Karin Fossum is sometimes referred to as the "Norwegian Queen of Crime". Her books are excellently written, with well thought out plots, lots of suspense, and great characterizations. She always penetrates deep into the psychology of her characters, and often displays considerable sympathy for criminals and outsiders in general.

The Indian Bride is Karin Fossum's fifth crime novel featuring Sejer, and a book for which Karin Fossum was nominated for the British Gold and Silver Dagger Award in 2005.

The first part of The Indian Bride tells the somewhat tragic and sad story of the events that transpire when the rather unremarkable Gunder Jomann, a middle-aged bachelor in a remote Norwegian village, decides to go on holiday to India to find a wife. The descriptions of the ensuing events are told in a very moving way. The author is truly gifted at making the reader care about her unglamorous characters.

Jomann does indeed find a wife, and returns as a married man. But on the day his Indian bride is due to join him, he is called to the hospital to his sister's bedside. The local taxi driver that is sent instead to meet the bride at the airport, returns without her. Then the town is shocked by the news of an Indian woman found bludgeoned to death in a nearby meadow.

Now Sejer and his colleague Skarre are called in. They eventually piece together the story that the reader knows from the first few chapters, and the story becomes one of narrowing down the suspects from the village community and trying to obtain a confession from the chief suspect.

A complete bibliography with reviews of all of Karin Fossum's books here!

Other great novels by Karin Fossum include When the Devil Holds the Candle (Inspector Sejer Mysteries).

Buy from amazon.co.uk (England): The Indian Bride, When the Devil Holds the Candle, or Broken (Not yet released).

Growth of the Soil, by Knut Hamsun. (First published in 1917) Growth of the Soil is generally viewed as one of the main reasons why Hamsun was awarded the Nobel Prize. “Growth of the Soil impresses me as among the very greatest novels I have ever read. It is wholly beautiful; it is saturated with wisdom and humor and tenderness.” —H. G. Wells “The whole modern school of fiction in the twentieth century stems from Hamsun.” —Isaac Bashevis Singer Isak Sellanrå, a man of few words and lots of action, walks into the woods, and makes his simple life happen, and the things that happen along the way are magical and beautiful, and full of hope and love and real life. He builds a home, finds a wife, and raises a family. The book focuses on two interesting and attractive literary characters, Isak and Inger. Isak is a simple, strong man with a knowledge of what's important, and how he wants the world to be. And Inger is a kind woman with a harelip, whose baby dies mysteriously, suspiciously. Morally, the characters aren't perfect human beings, but they are perfect characters, and perfectly depicted. "I can't think of any other book in world literature that comes anywhere near "Growth of the Soil" in portraying these simple, unsophisticated people breaking the land and struggle to live." (F.T. Olsen, at amazon.com) More Knut Hamsun books at this site, or a complete Hamsun bibliography at Leserglede, with reviews of all of Hamsun's books, his biography, and other materials about him. Other wonderful books by Knut Hamsun include Hunger (see our review of Hunger here), Mysteries (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics), and Pan: From Lieutenant Thomas Glahn's Papers (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics). Buy from amazon UK: Growth of the Soil (Penguin Classics), Hunger, Mysteries, or Pan.

Before You Sleep, by Linn Ullmann (Published in Norwegian 1998) Linn Ullman, the daughter of actress Liv Ullmann and director/producer Ingmar Bergman, lives in Oslo, Norway, and works as a literary critic in one the largest newspapers. She is an excellent and promising writer, and has so far written four books. Before You Sleep was originally written in Norwegian. While it was not viewed as controversial in Norway, American reviewers have regarded it as a "detailed and sexually frank novel." Such labels aside, this is a great and strong story of a Norwegian family, Blom, with strong and also somewhat eccentric women, that spans several generations. The story moves from Oslo to Brooklyn, both places well known to the author. The story is complicated. It is told, over time, from the mouth of one of the key characters in the book, Karin. It is about relations inside and out of the family, about motherhood, marriage, emotions, love, and even infidelity. Before You Sleep is an exceptional debut book. It is very well worth reading. Ullman tells her story in a way that makes the characters come alive, and make you sympathize with their strange actions and understand their emotions. “Of this autumns literary output, novelist Linn Ullmann is the wickedest and wittiest, and because she writes with a silent sincerity and merges all this with wit, intelligence and a generous picture of human beings, the novel is a real pleasure to read.”   -- CECILIE WINGER, FÆDRELANDSVENNEN (Norway) “Before You Sleep is infernally well written. The debutante, Linn Ullmann, has, from page one, found her own form and language, consistent in style until the end.”   GT (Sweden) Link to a complete bibliography, with reviews of all of Linn Ullman's books. Stella Descending is another very good and interesting book by Linn Ullmann that you may want to consider. Buy from amazon UK: Before You Sleep or Stella Descending.

Out Stealing Horses, by Per Petterson

Out Stealing Horses is a very special book, by a talented, prize-winning Norwegian author. It was listed as one of the top 5 fiction books of 2007 by The New York Review of Books.

After reading just a few pages I fell in love with this book. It all started, I think, with me smiling while reading. I even laughed. I read passages out load for my friend. And I enjoyed the book, a lot. The book was not exactly as I had imagined.

Viewed from the outside the book is relatively straight forward. 67 year old Trond moves to a house by a lake in the forest, in the Eastern part of Norway to retire. Here he lives alone with his dog, and spends his time with repairing the house and other small practical tasks. "All my life I have wanted to be alone in a place like this. Even when life was at its finest, as it has often been" (My translation from Norwegian).

But things change for Trond. Meetings with the neighbor living in the cabin a little further down the road evoke difficult memories for Trond. Memories about his father, about the summer of 1948 when he was 15 years old, and about events taking place that summer which were hard to understand for a fifteen year old boy. We flash back and relive those events with Trond, and then we follow the consequences they have for the mature Trond 52 years later.

The story in Out Stealing Horses is good, and it is told with great skill and considerable caution. But it wasn't only the story that made me love Out Stealing Horses. It was actually mostly the language - that beautiful, slightly remote, and very moderate and crisp language that Per Petterson has chosen for his story. A form perfect for making those things - small and large - that happen in the book stand out on their own accord in my interpretation only. A style of language that delivers joyful, happy, sad, tragical as well as beautiful events and scenes to me in such a raw, unprocessed form that is makes me need and want to reflect and ponder their implications and interrelations, and more or less forces me to relate to what I read.

In addition, I loved all those cute, interesting, staggering and mind-blowing observations, thoughts and reflections about life, being, and nothingness made by Trond. About the trivia of daily life, life in general, the goings on in the world at large, where Trond's particular point in life, situation, and context for interpretation on the one hand lends the story credibility and on the other hand provides a unique perspective that makes a lot of things take on meaning that differ a lot from more common meanings and interpretations.

Lot of joy, lots of food for thought. Out Stealing Horses is highly recommended!

See also Petterson's In the Wake: A Novel, another great book!

Buy from Amazon UK: Out Stealing Horses, In the Wake.

Smilla's Sense of Snow, by Peter Høeg (1992, depending on the translation, "Miss Smilla's Feeling For Snow.") This murder mystery/thriller takes place between Denmark and Greenland. Smilla Jaspersen is on of the strongest, most intriguing female characters to appear in fiction in a very long time. The novel is filled with action, suspense, and mystery. Six year old Isaiah, a Greenlander like Smilla, leaps to his death from the roof of the apartment building in which he lives with his mother. While the boy's body is still warm, the police pronounce it an accident. But Smilla, who lives in the same building and has come to love the little boy as her own, knows her young neighbor didn't fall from the rooftop on his own. She knows that he was very afraid of heights. Although there is only one set of footprints on the roof, she still suspects foul play as supported by her "reading" of the footprints.  Her investigations begin in Copenhagen, but eventually lead to an adventure on an ice breaking ship and then to an island in the northern part of Greenland and a very surprising ending. The motive of her initial investigation lies in the kindred spirit she shares with Isaiah, both having been born in Greenland and then brought to Copenhagen after a parent died. But as she learns more, the more intent she is to find the real answer behind this boy's death. Smilla's Sense of Snow book is an adventure in the grand tradition, with all the intrigue and occasional scenes of violence and disaster this suggests. I highly recommend it. It's a real page turner.  This book was selected as "Book of the Year" for 1993 by Time, People, and Entertainment Weekly. Other great books by Høeg include The Woman and the Ape: A Novel and The Quiet Girl: A Novel. Order from amazon UK: Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow, The Woman and the Ape (Panther), and The Quiet Girl. You can also by the movie about Smilla: Smilla's Sense of Snow [1997] (REGION 1) (NTSC).

The Unknown Sigrid Undset. (2001) The Unknown Sigrid Undset is a re-publication of some of Undset's early works (unfortunately with a pretty ethnocentric introduction). Jenny, first published in 1911, is the most important piece published again here. The original translation of Jenny, a really magnificent book in Norwegian, was almost horrendous, with bad English and whole passages deleted (censored). In this edition, beautifully translated by Tiina Nunnally, the book has been restored to its real glory in terms of writing as well as content. Here we meet the Nobel Prize winner Sigrid Undset in her full glory. Jenny tells the story of two people who meet in the street one evening in Rome, in the beginning of the last century: researcher Helge Gram and painter Jenny Winge. They embark on an affair, and when they meet again in Kristiania, Helge introduces Jenny to his family. Helge’s parents are living in a sinister marriage, something Helge is clearly marked by. This becomes a heavy burden to Jenny’s and Helge’s relationship, and after a while, they split up. Jenny, however discovers that she has much in common with Helge’s father; something which in turn leads him to leave his wife. This new relationship is soon to have tragic consequences for Jenny’s life Jenny is the novel that marked Undset’s breakthrough as a modern writer. It is an intelligent novel about a woman’s dream of love and her tragic fight to make that dream come true. Undset reveals a truth that is hard for the modern individual to accept; that there is no necessary connection between freedom and happiness. In addition to Jenny, The Unknown Sigrid Undset contains two great short stories, "Thjodolf" (from The Happy Age - 1908) and "Simonsen" (from Fates of the Poor - 1912). These are two of the best short stories Undset wrote in her early career, and really a great choice for inclusion in this excellent book. Finally, the book contains a collection of letters from the young Sigrid Undset. Overall, The Unknown Sigrid Undset is a great book, excellent work, and very important in restoring Undset to the position in the world literature that she deserves. See Leserglede's bibliography with reviews of all of Undset's books. Two other famous works by Sigrid Undset: Kristin Lavransdatter: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition), and The Master of Hestviken - 2-volume Set: In the Wilderness, the Son Avenger, the Axe, the Snake Pig (The Master of Hestviken, Volumes 1 and 2). Or order from amazon UK: Jenny (translated by Tiina Nunnally) or the Kristin Lavransdatter Trilogy: "Bridal Wealth", "Mistress of Husaby" and "The Cross". Back to the top