{"id":267056,"date":"2008-12-18T18:45:02","date_gmt":"2008-12-18T18:45:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wdev.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent-dev\/2008\/12\/18\/open-letter-spring-09-catalog-the-discoverer-by-jan-kjaerstad\/"},"modified":"2018-04-16T17:27:29","modified_gmt":"2018-04-16T17:27:29","slug":"open-letter-spring-09-catalog-the-discoverer-by-jan-kjaerstad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/2008\/12\/18\/open-letter-spring-09-catalog-the-discoverer-by-jan-kjaerstad\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Letter Spring 09 Catalog: The Discoverer by Jan Kjaerstad"},"content":{"rendered":"

I referenced this book in my earlier post about “The Conqueror<\/em> galley giveaway”: but in introducing the spring Open Letter titles, it definitely deserves it’s own entry.<\/p>\n

The Discoverer<\/em> is the final volume in the “Wergeland Trilogy,” a collection of three books—The Seducer<\/em> and The Conqueror<\/em> being their other two—by Jan Kjaerstad that focus on the life of Jonas Wergeland and the death of his wife Margrete.<\/p>\n

In Kjaerstad’s universe, Wergeland is an ultra-famous Norwegian TV producer who created a series called “Thinking Big” about famous figures in Norway’s history. Everything’s going really well for him (more or less) until he returns home from a trip and finds his wife dead on the floor. <\/p>\n

The three books in the series can be read independently of each other: each title recounts stories from Jonas’s life from a different person’s perspective, weaving together small events in hopes of explaining what happened to him. The Seducer<\/em> builds up to the moment that he arrives home and finds his wife dead, and The Conqueror<\/em> recounts his life story in light of the fact that he admitted in court to killing Margrete.<\/p>\n

The Discoverer<\/em> opens years later, after Jonas has been released from prison. The novel is narrated by both Jonas and his daughter, who are together on a voyage down the great Sognefjord with a group of young people working on a multimedia project to encapsulate all the history and importance of the Sognefjord. Which is interesting and relevant, since taken together, the three books in this trilogy attempt to create a new way of looking at the world, of processing information. <\/p>\n

This novel is a bit different from the others—the chapters are much longer and tend to weave together a number of stories first encountered in the earlier books. One of Kjaerstad’s great strengths is his ability to sequence stories in a particular way to create a mosaic of Jonas’s life. If The Seducer<\/em> is arranged like a fugue, and The Conqueror<\/em> like a spiral, The Discoverer<\/em> is most like a set of concentric circles. Not that it’s necessary to pay attention to this—each part is incredibly compelling and immediately draws the reader into Jonas’s complicated, fascinating life. <\/p>\n

It’s hard to choose a favorite of these three books, but I agree with the translator Barbara Haveland that this novel is mindblowing, and alters everything that came before . . . And it’s not surprising that it won the Nordic Prize when it was first published in Norway. <\/p>\n

Our entire spring catalog will be online in the very, very near future, but in the meantime, here’s an excerpt<\/a> of The Discoverer,<\/em> and you can find write-ups of four other spring titles by clicking here.<\/a><\/p>\n

\n<\/a>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I referenced this book in my earlier post about “The Conqueror galley giveaway”: but in introducing the spring Open Letter titles, it definitely deserves it’s own entry. The Discoverer is the final volume in the “Wergeland Trilogy,” a collection of three books—The Seducer and The Conqueror being their other two—by Jan Kjaerstad that focus on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":292,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[67486],"tags":[17936,1836,736,17946,16776,17926],"class_list":["post-267056","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","tag-barbara-haveland","tag-cwp","tag-jan-kjaerstad","tag-norwegian-literature","tag-open-letter-spring-2009","tag-the-discoverer"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267056","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/292"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=267056"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267056\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":355406,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267056\/revisions\/355406"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=267056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=267056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=267056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}