A short life of the author
Per Petterson (born 1952) is a Norwegian novelist whose Out Stealing Horses (2003) became one of the most internationally acclaimed Scandinavian novels of the twenty-first century. His spare, luminous prose and his focus on working-class Norwegian lives — men who work with their hands, who inhabit silence more than speech — have drawn comparisons to Knut Hamsun and the later Hemingway. His fiction is shaped by loss: in 1990, his mother, father, and younger brother were killed in the Scandinavian Star ferry fire, a catastrophe whose echoes reverberate through every novel he has written since.
Life and Career
Petterson grew up in a working-class family in Oslo, worked in a bookshop for twelve years, and was a librarian before becoming a full-time writer. His early novels, including Aske og vind (1987), attracted attention in Norway but did not circulate internationally.
Til Sibir (To Siberia, 1996) was his first novel to reach English-language readers — a story set in wartime Denmark about a young woman who dreams of escaping to Siberia. The novel’s combination of historical setting, emotional restraint, and poetic prose established the elements of his mature style.
I kjølvannet (In the Wake, 2000) was his most directly autobiographical work, dealing with the aftermath of the ferry disaster that killed his family. The novel followed a man struggling to rebuild his life after catastrophic loss, and its controlled grief — never indulgent, never sentimental — was devastating.
Ut og stjæle hester (Out Stealing Horses, 2003) was his masterpiece. Trond, a sixty-seven-year-old widower, retreats to a remote cabin in eastern Norway and is confronted by memories of the summer of 1948, when he was fifteen and a series of events — a shooting accident, a father’s wartime secret, a friend’s family tragedy — altered the trajectory of his life. The novel’s quiet power comes from its precise rendering of landscape, physical work, and the way memory returns unbidden. Petterson writes about chopping wood, felling trees, and rowing boats with the specificity of someone who has done these things, and the physical world becomes the language through which emotion speaks.
The novel won the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, was named one of the ten best books of the decade by The Times, and has been translated into over fifty languages. It was adapted into a film in 2019.
Jeg forbanner tidens elv (I Curse the River of Time, 2008) explored a young man’s relationship with his dying mother against the backdrop of the 1989 fall of communism. Jeg nekter (I Refuse, 2012) followed two childhood friends across decades, examining how early trauma shapes adult life.
Key Works
- To Siberia (1996)
- In the Wake (2000)
- Out Stealing Horses (2003)
- I Curse the River of Time (2008)
- I Refuse (2012)
Collecting Petterson
Ut og stjæle hester (2003, Oktober, Oslo) is the Norwegian first edition and primary collectible, bringing $50–$120. English-language first editions — Out Stealing Horses (Harvill Secker, 2005; Graywolf Press, 2007) — bring $30–$100 for fine copies. Petterson is a private person who rarely signs, making signed copies uncommon. His consistent critical excellence and his association with the Scandinavian literary tradition make him a strong long-term collecting prospect.