Norwegian author Per Petterson’s acclaimed novel 'Out Stealing Horses' has won the 100,000 Euro International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, beating off stiff competition from seven established names such as Salman Rushdie and Julian Barnes.
6/19/2007 :: The 100,000 Euro prize was awarded to Petterson on June 14 by the chairperson of IMPAC, Miroslav Palas, in the Irish capital's City Hall, and a specially commissioned Waterford Crystal trophy was presented by the Lord Mayor of Dublin. 'Out Stealing Horses', which was the only translated title on the shortlist, won the author 75,000 Euro and the book's translator, Anne Born, 25,000 Euro. The shortlist also included the following titles: 'Arthur and George' by Julian Barnes, 'Shalimar the Clown' by Salman Rushdie, 'Slow Man' by J.M. Coetzee, 'A Long Long Way' by Sebastian Barry, 'Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close' by Jonathan Safran Foer, 'The Short Day Dying' by Peter Hobbs, and 'No Country for Old Men' by Cormac McCarthy.
'Out Stealing Horses', which was published by Graywolf Press the U.S. in May 2007, has already won the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize 2006. It was translated from Norwegian by Anne Born, and is described as a moving tale about feelings of isolation and of the painful loss of innocence and of traditional ways of life gone for ever.
The judges called the book a "magical novel that captivates the reader" and said it is a masterful achievement by one of Europe’s finest novelists. "Out Stealing Horses is an intensely lyrical and evocative novel that handles with a deft and seemingly effortless prose style the transition of the past into memory, and its shifting, unpredictable persistence."
In 1948, when he is fifteen, Trond spends a summer in the country with his father. The events - the accidental death of a child, his best friend’s feelings of guilt and eventual disappearance, his father’s decision to leave the family for another woman – will change his life forever. An early morning adventure out stealing horses leaves Trond bruised and puzzled by his friend Jon’s sudden breakdown. The tragedy that lies behind this scene becomes the catalyst for the two boys’ families gradually to fall apart. As a 67-year-old man, and following the death of his wife, Trond has moved to an isolated part of Norway to live in solitude. But a chance encounter with a character from the fateful summer of 1948 brings the painful memories of that year flooding back, and will leave Trond even more convinced of his decision to end his days alone.
Per Petterson, winner of the Norwegian Critics Award and the Booksellers’ Best Book of the Year Award, was born in 1952 and was a librarian and bookseller before he published his first work, a volume of short stories, in 1987. Since then he has written a book of essays and five novels that have established his reputation as one of Norway’s best fiction writers. 'To Siberia' and 'In the Wake' (which was longlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize in 2004) are also published by Harvill in English translation.
Royal Norwegian Consulate General in New York