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Echoland is the powerful and emotionally resonant first novel from Per Petterson. Written in the mold of his early story collection Ashes in My Mouth, Sand in My Shoes, it features a young Arvid Janssen, who is now twelve, on the verge of his teenage years and beginning to understand more about the world and his place in it.
Set over the course of a single formative summer, the novel captures a series of episodes from Arvid's long visit to his grandparents' home in Denmark. He rides his bike around town, befriends other children on the beach, fishes for plaice, and weathers misunderstandings with his mother and grandparents, all of which Petterson imbues with the hope and yearning that come with this stage of life. Echoland is an assured and poignant beginning for an author—and character—who would go on to be loved the world over.
"A journey from Norway to Denmark becomes a life-changing rite of passage in Petterson's beautifully understated story...Petterson's portrayal of the inner life of a preteen boy is precise and moving, and the remarkable prose captures the landscape as well as the painful deterioration of Arvid's parents' marriage. This early work from a master leaves an indelible mark." - Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Merging time and memory to reveal the trauma, confusion, and exhilaration of growing up, this coming-of-age novel proves that Petterson's immense talent was on display from the very first." - Library Journal (starred review)
"[R]eaders will be fascinated by how Pettersen has knowingly or unknowingly planted the seeds of [his] later works here...In this slim work, Pettersen writes with minimalist reticence—a remark here, a detail there—to create poignant lyricism." - Kirkus Reviews
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in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Photo: Torunn Nilsen
Per Petterson, born in Oslo, Norway in 1952, worked for several years as an unskilled labourer, trained as a librarian, and worked as a bookseller, writer, and translator before publishing his first work, Aske i munnen, sand i skoa (Ash In His Mouth, Sand In His Shoe), a volume of short stories, in 1987. This book was proclaimed one of the decade's most sensational debuts.
Since then he has written a book of essays and several novels that have established his reputation as one of Norway's most significant fiction writers. These are Ekkoland (1989), Det er greit for meg (1992), To Siberia (1996), In the Wake (2000), Out Stealing Horses (2003), Månen over Porten (2004), and I Curse the River of Time (Jeg forbanner tidens elv) (2008 . For To Siberia, Petterson was nominated for the ...
Name Pronunciation
Per Petterson: PEHR
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