In the Wake by Per Petterson
Translated from the Norwegian by Anne Born

Arvid's only human contact is with his Kurdish neighbour, and with a woman whom he glimpses in the flat across the street, whose face seems to mirror the loneliness and loss in his own life. Then slowly, the memories begin to return: of his childhood, of his father, of his two younger brothers. He begins to write again.
Poignant, restrained, and at times unbearably moving, In the Wake is informed by terrible tragedy, and by man's sense of the beauty of the natural world, at times our only source of solace.

Per Petterson, born in 1952, was a librarian and bookseller before publishing his first work, a volume of short stories, in 1987. Since then he has written three novels, which have established his reputation as one of Norway's best fiction writers.

Anne Born, poet, critic and historian, has translated writers form the principal Scandinavian languages including Per Petterson's To Siberia.