The Norwegian session of the 2010 European Book Club will take place on November 30th at the Norwegian Seaman's Church. The book discussed will be Siamese, by Stig Sæterbakken.
The Austrian, Czech, French, German, Italian, Norwegian, Polish and Spanish cultural institutes in New York City have joined together to create a new European Book Club. The Club meets monthly in a different cultural institute and discuss a well-known, contemporary novel of the respective country.
The Book : Siamese, by Stig Sæterbakken
Edwin Mortens is almost blind, but has good hearing; his wife Erna is hard of hearing, but has excellent eyes. Paralyzed from the waist down, Edwin sits locked in his bathroom all day, every day, trying to liberate his mind from his body. The experiment is going relatively well: nearly all his bodily functions have ceased, his limbs are in a state of decay, and his digestive system is in the process of breaking down. “This body,” he says, “is a sewer.”
To pass the time, Edwin dedicates his days to chewing gum and screaming at his wife, on whom he is, nonetheless, entirely dependent; while Erna’s life, despite Edwin’s constant abuse, revolves around her hideous husband. Edwin and Erna live in a state of perfect equilibrium—fueled by habit, cruelty, humiliation, and quite possibly love—until a young maintenance man is called to replace a lightbulb in Edwin’s bathroom, and the “Siamese twins” find themselves embroiled in a new and vicious struggle for power.
Reviews:
The New York Times: “Siamese is a difficult and brilliant book, like one of those skulls inscribed “As I am now, so shall you be” that a death-besotted Romantic might have kept by his bedside. The Siamese pairs here are not only Edwin and Sweetie, Edwin and the reader, life and death, but the reader’s own present and his or her future.”
If you would like to register for this event, send us an email to
norway.nyc@europeanbookclub.org
www.europeanbookclub.org