{"id":282556,"date":"2011-03-08T17:07:54","date_gmt":"2011-03-08T17:07:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wdev.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent-dev\/2011\/03\/08\/i-curse-the-river-of-time-why-this-book-should-win-the-btba\/"},"modified":"2018-05-04T15:24:11","modified_gmt":"2018-05-04T15:24:11","slug":"i-curse-the-river-of-time-why-this-book-should-win-the-btba","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/2011\/03\/08\/i-curse-the-river-of-time-why-this-book-should-win-the-btba\/","title":{"rendered":"I Curse the River of Time [Why This Book Should Win the BTBA]"},"content":{"rendered":"

Similar to years past, we\u2019re going to be featuring each of the 25 titles on the BTBA<\/span> Fiction Longlist<\/a> over the next month plus, but in contrast to previous editions, this year we\u2019re going to try an experiment and frame all write-ups as \u201cwhy this book should win.\u201d Some of these entries will be absurd, some more serious, some very funny, a lot written by people who normally don\u2019t contribute to Three Percent. Overall, the point is to have some fun and give you a bunch of reasons as to why you should read at least a few of the BTBA<\/span> titles.<\/em><\/p>\n

Click here<\/a> for all past and future posts.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I Curse the River of Time<\/em><\/b> by Per Petterson, translated by Charlotte Barslund and the author<\/p>\n

Language:<\/b> Norwegian
\nCountry:<\/b> Norway
\nPublisher:<\/b> Graywolf
\nPages:<\/b> 224<\/p>\n

Why This Book Should Win:<\/b> Because it was written by Per Petterson, arguably one of Scandinavia\u2019s finest living writers. The book has already won a slew of prizes. In Norway, it won the 2008 Critics\u2019 Prize and the 2008 Brage Prize. And in 2009 it won the prestigious Nordic Council\u2019s Literary Prize. Why not give it another one?<\/p>\n

This post was written K.E. Semmel, a writer and translator whose work has appeared in<\/em> Ontario Review, The Washington Post, World Literature Today, Best European Fiction 2011, and elsewhere. His translation of Karin Fossum\u2019s next novel will be published by Harvill Secker in the UK in 2011 and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in the US in 2012. And he\u2019s a St. Louis Cardinals fan.<\/em><\/p>\n

When Per Petterson burst onto the international literary scene in 2007 with his novel Out Stealing Horses<\/em>, the English-speaking world got a glimpse of what readers in Scandinavia have known for quite a while: Petterson\u2019s work is special. On the dust jacket for this new novel is a quote from Richard Ford: \u201cPer Petterson is a profoundly gifted novelist.\u201d That Ford is a fan of Petterson\u2019s work can be no surprise to readers of each author. Like Ford\u2019s narrators, particularly Frank Bascombe, the narrator of I Curse the River of Time<\/em>, Arvid Jensen, is a self-reflective man whose story unfolds most powerfully as a kind of internal monologue.<\/p>\n

This long passage, in a lively translation by veteran translator Charlotte Barslund, is an example of Petterson\u2019s power as a reflectionist. With a few deftly chosen words he tells us a lot about Arvid Jensen:<\/p>\n

And then I entered the hall and walked into the kitchen, the living room, where everything was as it had been for almost ten years, the same posters on the walls, the same rugs on the floor, the same goddamn red armchairs, and yet not like that at all, not like it was in the beginning, when there were just the two of us against the world, just she and I, shoulder to shoulder, hand in hand, there is just you and me<\/em>, we said to each other, just you and me<\/em>, we said. But something had happened, nothing hung together any more, all things had spaces, had distances between them, like satellites, attracted to and pushed away at the same instant, and it would take immense willpower to cross those spaces, those distances, much more than I had available, much more than I had courage to use. And nothing was like it had been inside the car either, driving through three or four districts in Romerike, in eastern Norway, east of Oslo. There the car was wrapped around me, but up here, in the flat, things fell out of focus and spun off to all sides. It was like a virus on the balance nerve. I close my eyes to true up the world, and then I heard the bathroom door open and her footsteps across the floor. I would have known them anywhere on earth, on any surface, and she stopped right in front of me. I could hear her breath, but not close enough to feel it on my face. She waited. I waited. In one of the bedrooms the girls were laughing out loud. There was something about her breath. It was never like that before. I kept my eyes closed, I squeezed them tightly shut. And then I heard her sigh.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u201cFor Christ\u2019s sake, Arvid,\u201d she said. \u201cPlease stop that. It\u2019s so childish.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Much like Out Stealing Horses<\/em>, I Curse The River of Time<\/em> is a novel in which time itself takes on the role of a character, bending backward and forward. The novel interweaves three strands of time:<\/p>\n