"Islanders are never afraid, if they were, they wouldn't be able to live here. Born on the island that bears her name, Ingrid Barr�y's world is circumscribed by storm-scoured rocks and the moods of the sea by which her family lives and dies. But her father dreams of a bridge, and her mother longs for her own childhood island, and Norway faces its own sea change: the advent of a modern world and its attendant unpredictability and violence. Brilliantly...

"Echoland is the powerful and emotionally resonant first novel from Per Petterson. Written in the mold of his early story collection Ashes in My Mouth, Sand in My Shoes, it features a young Arvid Jansen, who is now twelve, on the verge of his teenage years and beginning to understand more about the world and his place in it. Set over the course of a single formative summer, the novel captures a series of episodes from Arvid's long visit to his grandparents'...

"In the waning days of the German occupation of Norway, Karin and her husband move from Oslo to a tiny village in the south with their young son, the narrator. There they aim to live out their dream of caring for those who can't look after themselves. They have spent months building a modest house with rooms for patients, and it's soon filled with three adult men who are psychologically unstable--including Karin's uncle Josef, who suffered a head...