I Curse the River of Time A Novel

An enthralling novel of a mother and son's turbulent relationship from the author of Out Stealing Horses. It is 1989: Communism is crumbling, and Arvid Jansen, thirty-seven, is facing his first divorce. At the same time, his mother gets diagnosed with cancer. Over a few intense autumn days, we follow Arvid as he struggles to find a new footing in his life while all the established patterns around him are changing at staggering speed. I Curse the River of Time is an honest, heartbreaking yet humorous portrayal of a complicated mother-son relationship told in Per Petterson's precise and beautiful prose.

PER PETTERSON won the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award for his novel Out Stealing Horses, which has been translated into more than thirty languages and was named a Best Book of 2007 by The New York Times.

PRAISE FOR I CURSE THE RIVER OF TIME:

*One of Entertainment Weekly's "18 Books We Can't Wait to Read This Summer"*

“An emotional suckerpunch. . . . Petterson blends enough hope with the gorgeously evoked melancholy to come up with a heartbreaking and cautiously optimistic work.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review

"Petterson tells another poignant, harrowing and sometimes comic story of a man coming to terms with his dying mother, his failures (job, marriage) and his failures in the eyes of his mother: 'You squirt!' But mother and son are bound by feelings and memories for which even the word 'love' doesn't do justice.” —The Wall Street Journal

“All the inevitability of life, its fragile glue and the doubts that stalk the survivors are summoned and considered in Petterson's candid, allusive fiction. There is no easy sentiment, only genuine emotional power. His tender new novel is as masterfully evocative as In the Wake and Out Stealing Horses, as gentle as To Siberia, and as exceptional as all three.”—The Irish Times

“Though Petterson is often compared to Hemingway and Carver, he has etched a vernacular all his own. The loveliness of his prose lies not only with its distilled nature, but also in its repetitions and unexpected cadences, which infuse his style with a tenderness unseen in other spare prose virtuosos.”
—The Collagist

“The atmosphere of this latest from Petterson, famed for the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award winner Out Stealing Horses, is as gray as the stark Norwegian landscape. Melancholy permeates every character like a dense Oslo fog. Yet, this author's gift is his ability to convey so much emotion in such a sparse prose style.”—Library Journal, starred review

“[Petterson] offers here a kind of origami novel: time bends and folds around the characters so they are both young and old, healthy and sick, dead and alive.  His considerable skill is evident in the clarity with which readers are immersed in each chapter—though we may leap backwards and forwards on the temporal plane, we never stumble or trip. . . . The final product is something important, lovely, and a bit mysterious.”—Foreword Magazine

“[Petterson] deftly alternates between present and past. . . . His prose is elegant and spare.”—Booklist

“[A] melancholy novel. . . . Fans—and curious newcomers—will snap it up.”—Newsday

PRAISE FOR PER PETTERSON:

“Rife with beautiful incantatory moments.” —The New York Times Book Review

“Petterson’s spare and deliberate prose has astonishing force.” —The New Yorker

“Reading a Petterson novel is like falling into a northern landscape painting—all shafts of light and clear palpable chill.” —Time

“I was completely taken with Out Stealing Horses from the first page. I found it powerful yet so quietly done I could hear myself breathe, and I finished with an exhalation of awe.” —AMY TAN

“Per Petterson is a profoundly gifted novelist.” —RICHARD FORD