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The pastor / Hanne Ørstavik ; translated from the Norwegian by Martin Aitken.

By: Contributor(s): Material type: TextTextLanguage: English Original language: Norwegian Publisher: Brooklyn, NY : Archipelago Books, 2021Edition: First Archipelago Books editionDescription: 270 pages ; 17 cmContent type:
  • text
Media type:
  • unmediated
Carrier type:
  • volume
ISBN:
  • 9781953861085
  • 1953861083
Uniform titles:
  • Presten. English
Subject(s): Genre/Form: Summary: "Liv is fascinated by words and their edges and echoes. As a student of theology in Germany, she researches how the language of the Bible was wielded against the indigenous Sami people during the 1800s. Liv excavates their past and her own, searching for meaning in a scene of Sami children gathering cloudberries and figs, from the memory of the magical weaver woman from an Astrid Lindgren fairytale she read as a child, or in how misstep and misunderstandings can lead to isolation and pain. With each new experience and confrontation, fresh questions about scripture and empathy and who she is arise. She wonders how "language, in all its plasticity, became so stiff and unbending," and slowly, she bends it back toward her, building her own vocabulary of healing"-- Provided by publisher.
Holdings
Item type Home library Collection Call number Materials specified Status Date due Barcode Item holds
Adult Book Adult Book Main Library Fiction ØRSTAVIK HANNE Available 33111010742431
Total holds: 0

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

A major work of contemporary fiction from a "leading light of international literature" ( Publishers Weekly , starred review), Hanne Ørstavik, whose last novel, Love , won the PEN Translation Prize.

A thought-provoking, existential novel - as Liv searches for meaning and identity in her own life, she must find the words to connect, comfort and lead others.

Liv, an intense and reticent theologian, moves to a bitterly cold fishing village to take up a post as the church's new pastor following the death of her friend, Kristiane. In the upper rooms of a large house overlooking the fjord, Liv plans her sermons and studies the violent interplay of Norway's Christian colonial past. She trails downstairs into the apartment below for dinners and breakfasts with a widow and her two children. As Liv becomes acquainted with the villagers and their own private tragedies, memories bloom in passages that urgently question the unpredictable bedrock of language, and the peculiar channels of imagined experience as it might have been, if only there had been a different set of words, or an outstretched hand.

The past mingles darkly with the present, cascading in chilling images: a dog lying dead in the snowy plains, Kristiane's teeth flashing as she laughs, a procession of singing, knife-carrying protesters curving along a river's edge. Martin Aitken's translation of this extraordinary novel rings with the brilliance and rigor of a master.

"Liv is fascinated by words and their edges and echoes. As a student of theology in Germany, she researches how the language of the Bible was wielded against the indigenous Sami people during the 1800s. Liv excavates their past and her own, searching for meaning in a scene of Sami children gathering cloudberries and figs, from the memory of the magical weaver woman from an Astrid Lindgren fairytale she read as a child, or in how misstep and misunderstandings can lead to isolation and pain. With each new experience and confrontation, fresh questions about scripture and empathy and who she is arise. She wonders how "language, in all its plasticity, became so stiff and unbending," and slowly, she bends it back toward her, building her own vocabulary of healing"-- Provided by publisher.

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