About this Item
1st Printing. Signed. 238 pages. Published in 2010. The author's fourth novel. Now considered a contemporary classic. The Limited Slipcased Edition. Precedes and should not be confused with all other subsequent editions, particularly copies that are signed on a bookplate. Published in a small and limited print run whose number is not specified as part of Powell's valuable "Indiespensable" Series. The edition is beautifully produced, uses the original archival sheets of Graywolf Press, comes in an austerely elegant black cloth slipcase, and includes supplementary materials that are available only through the edition. The Limited Slipcased Edition is now scarce. Presents Per Petterson's "Jeg forbanner tidens elv" in a felicitous English translation. The fourth novel by Per Petterson to be translated into English. It is a prequel to his second novel, "In The Wake" (2006). "Examines lives half-lived, ending and perhaps beginning anew. In 1989, 37-year-old Arvid Jansen's marriage is ending and his mother is dying of cancer. Hoping to leave his marital woes behind in Oslo, Jansen follows his Danish-born mother to her home country, to the beach house where the family spent summers. During the ferry ride and the following days in Denmark, Jansen recalls his childhood bond with his mother and his decision, after two years of college, to leave school and join his fellow Communists in the factories. He struggles with his commitment to Communism - the title is a line from a poem by Mao Tse Tung - and with his place in his family and the larger world. Petterson blends hope with gorgeously evoked melancholy to come up with a heart-breaking and cautiously optimistic work" (Allison Block). An absolute "must-have" title for Per Petterson collectors. This is a copy of the Limited Slipcased Edition. It is very prominently, neatly, and beautifully signed in black pen-marker on the Front Limited Edition Page by Per Petterson. It should not be confused with copies that are signed on a bookplate. In addition to the black cloth slipcase, it comes with supplementary materials that are available only through this edition. This title is a contemporary classic. This is one of few copies of the Limited Slipcased Edition still available online and is in especially fine condition: Clean, crisp, and bright, a pristine beauty. Please note: Copies available online have serious flaws, are subsequent printings, or are remainder-marked. This is surely an accessible and lovely alternative. A rare signed copy thus. Winner of the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award in 2007 for "Out Stealing Horses". One of the greatest writers of our time. A fine copy. (SEE ALSO OTHER PER PETTERSON TITLES IN OUR CATALOG) ISBN 1555975569. Seller Inventory # 18585
Bibliographic Details
Title: I CURSE THE RIVER OF TIME: THE LIMITED ...
Publisher: Minneapolis, MN: Graywolf Press, 2010
Publication Date: 2010
Binding: Hardcover
Condition: As New
Dust Jacket Condition: As New
Signed: Signed by Author
Edition: 1st Edition.
About this title
An enthralling novel of a mother and son's turbulent relationship from the author of Out Stealing Horses
Norway, 1989: Communism is unraveling all over Europe. Arvid Jansen, thirty-seven, is trying to bridge the yawning gulf that opened up years earlier between himself and his mother. He is in the throes of a divorce, and she has just been diagnosed with cancer.
Over a few intense autumn days, Arvid struggles to find a new footing in his life. As he attempts to negotiate the present changes around him, he casts his mind back to holidays on the beach with his brothers, and to the early days of his courtship. Most importantly, he revisits the idealism of his communist youth, when he chose the factory floor over the college education his mother had struggled so hard to provide. Back then, Arvid's loyalty to his working-class background outweighed his mother's wish for him to escape it.
As Petterson's masterful narrative shifts effortlessly through the years, we see Arvid tentatively circling his mother, unable to tell her what she already knows he is thinking. In its piercing portrait of their layered relationship, I Curse the River of Time bears all the hallmarks of Petterson's compassion for humanity that has won him readers the world over.
"An emotional suckerpunch. . . . Petterson blends enough hope with the gorgeously evoked melancholy to come up with a heartbreaking and cautiously optimistic work." --Publishers Weekly, starred review
"Petterson tells another poignant, harrowing and sometimes comic story of a man coming to terms with his dying mother, his failures (job, marriage) and his failures in the eyes of his mother: 'You squirt!' But mother and son are bound by feelings and memories for which even the word 'love' doesn't do justice." --The Wall Street Journal
"All the inevitability of life, its fragile glue and the doubts that stalk the survivors are summoned and considered in Petterson's candid, allusive fiction. There is no easy sentiment, only genuine emotional power. His tender new novel is as masterfully evocative as In the Wake and Out Stealing Horses, as gentle as To Siberia, and as exceptional as all three." --The Irish Times
"Though Petterson is often compared to Hemingway and Carver, he has etched a vernacular all his own. The loveliness of his prose lies not only with its distilled nature, but also in its repetitions and unexpected cadences, which infuse his style with a tenderness unseen in other spare prose virtuosos." --The Collagist
"The atmosphere of this latest from Petterson, famed for the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award winner Out Stealing Horses, is as gray as the stark Norwegian landscape. Melancholy permeates every character like a dense Oslo fog. Yet, this author's gift is his ability to convey so much emotion in such a sparse prose style." --Library Journal, starred review
"[Petterson] offers here a kind of origami novel: time bends and folds around the characters so they are both young and old, healthy and sick, dead and alive. His considerable skill is evident in the clarity with which readers are immersed in each chapter--though we may leap backwards and forwards on the temporal plane, we never stumble or trip. . . . The final product is something important, lovely, and a bit mysterious." --Foreword Magazine
"[Petterson] deftly alternates between present and past. . . . His prose is elegant and spare." --Booklist
"[A] melancholy novel. . . . Fans--and curious newcomers--will snap it up." --Newsday
"Petterson's spare and deliberate prose has astonishing force." --The New Yorker on Per Petterson
"Reading a Petterson novel is like falling into a northern landscape painting--all shafts of light and clear palpable chill." --Time on Per Petterson
"I was completely taken with Out Stealing Horses from the first page. I found it powerful yet so quietly done I could hear myself breathe, and I finished with an exhalation of awe. " --AMY TAN
"Per Petterson is a profoundly gifted novelist." --RICHARD FORD on Per Petterson
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
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