He was 18 when he knew he wanted to write, but he couldn't finish anything.
So he trained as a librarian, worked in a printing plant and then a bookstore. Not until mid life when a friend said to him, "If you don't really take this seriously, you're going to die before you get a book out.", did he get going.
Per Petterson is Norwegian and not that many Norwegian books are translated into English.
If you're a Norwegian writer, you are not visible in the world," he says. "The door of the English language is very hard to open for a Norwegian writer."
Still Out Stealing Horses sneaks up on people. "It snuck up on the world."
"Out Stealing Horses: A Novel" (Per Petterson)
It's appeared on several best of the year lists including the Time magazine, the National Book Critics Circle, the New York Times and won the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award in June.
Northern Light is the review that made me want to read the book.
Per Petterson is a writer who has accepted the hand fate dealt and embraced the lifelong project it implies.
"All I ever think about," he says, "is families."
Posted by Jill Fallon at December 27, 2007 12:51 PM | PermalinkHi, Jill -- 'Haven't read any of his books, but I fell for Roger Scruton based upon something I read about him in Brussels Journal awhile back:
"A political culture that is in denial about a serious social problem will condemn those who seek to discuss it and try its best to silence them," the great British political philosopher Roger Scruton told members of a "Euroskeptic" party audience in Belgium recently.
More here in my own blogpost about it: http://sisu.typepad.com/sisu/2006/06/a_political_cul.html
Posted by: Sissy Willis at January 4, 2008 2:28 PM