Tag: Norvik press

The Sharks by Jens Bjørneboe

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The Sharks by Jens Bjørneboe

Norwegian fiction

Original title – Haiene

Translator – Esther Greenleaf Mürer

Source – Personal copy

I have been a fan of ship-based books over the years.  I’ve recently been looking at some of Joseph Conrad’s ship novels to read but then remembered I had this book by a writer I have been meaning to read for a number of years.  Jens Bjørneboe is one of those writers whose own life story sounds like an epic novel. Childhood spent in bed, then fleeing to Sweden in World War II to avoid forced labour camp.  Falling for a Jewish German woman gave him a huge love of German Culture.  Add to this drinking and depression, and we have a man who died too young. This was his last novel and maybe his best-known work.  But he has a trilogy as well about the evil inherent in the human race called The History of Bestiality that like this book, has been published by  Norvik press this is one of those small presses that should be better known they have brought out a lot of Selma Lagerlöf books The first woman to win the Nobel Literature prize and maybe a great pick for Woman in Translation month Next Month.

The Greeks called him Poseidon, and in very ancient times also Psyche, who only later became a goddess – the human soul, the higher, unearthly love, énere ennobled – I could almost say: Holy Venus. (It occurs to me that Sancta Venere has been forced to lend her name to those diseases which medical science calls ‘venereal”, which in shipping offices the world over are referred to as ‘self-inflicted’ — and which were unfortunately not unknown on board our own lovely white bark.) But it’s not Psyche or the sublimated Venus we shall discuss here; it is the violent, brutal, and mighty Neptune, lord of abysses and deeps, author of the passions.

We shall look a bit more closely at how mythology, the clear childhood dreams of humanity, describes him. Who says that our reason sees further into the abyss?

The sea is all around them, or as it is called poseidon

 

The Sharks is a book that captures a world that, when the book is set, maybe was dying.  Sailing around the world on a ship, the book follows the voyage of the Neptune from Manila Via Marseille to Rio De Janeiro.  The book is told by one of the ship’s crew, Peder Jensen, the second officer, as they sail in 1899, with a new century dawning and the crew splitting before the narrator’s eyes. The book is told through episodic perspectives of various members of the crew, from the Mate to the carpenter to the symbolic sharks that always follow the ship.  A crew member whose brother was killed by the captain, a chinaman the cook who likes and loves his knives maybe too much. A cannibal.  This all adds to the pressure pot that is a ship too old for its time, maybe, so when there is a mutiny, and they end up shipwrecked, it has all been simmering through Peder’s eyes.

All seamen who have sailed in tropical waters hate and despise and curse the lovely brutes. Lovely? — Yes. Seen from above or from the side they are unsurpassed in their beauty. It is only from the front that the shark is ugly; but then it’s as hideous as all hell’s devils together – with its stupid, idiotic little pig eyes and its loathsome gape of a vastness almost contrary to nature, crammed with the sharp, serrate teeth which grow and grow and fall out and are continually renewed from within. All its life the shark endlessly produces new teeth, over and over again, in a few hours — as if the whole meaning of existence were to bring forth teeth, which in time will be spat out and sink to the bottom. Where it has been possible to explore the sea bed in shark-rich waters, the banks have proved to consist in great part of such worn-out sharks’ teeth.

The sharks following them in the water have a double meaning

Bjørneboe had a real thing, it seems, about good and evil in his books, so there are a lot of things here, like the sharks and the various origins of the characters, that also have a lot to do with the perception of good and evil. There are also nods to classic books like Moby-Dick; a couple of the characters, like the captain, share traits with Melville’s characters. But there are also nods to other ship tales like the Bounty: a crew pushed to the edge, a mutiny.  It also bridges some of the gaps in Conrad’s early years with tales like The Children of the Sea (I won’t use the old title!) or the autobiographical Shadow Line, both set on sailing boats like this, but earlier.  In his Typhoon, set a few years after this on a steamship, the book is not just a boat but a boat on the cusp of a new century, a new world, a new way of sailing, even.  A great intro to a writer I’d like to get to know a little better.  Have you read this book or any other by Jens Bjørneboe, or a favourite ship-based book?

A House in Norway by Vigdis Hjorth

~ winstonsdad ~ 6 Comments

A House in Norway by Vigdis Hjorth

Norweigan fiction

Original title – Et norsk hus

Translator – Charlotte Barslund

Source – personal copy

I brought will and testaments earlier this year then remembered I had this by the Norweigan writer Vigdis Hjorth. Vigdis grew up in Oslo she studied Philosophy, literature and political science and has been writing both adult and children’s fiction. She writes about the dilemmas of living in Modern society, her character struggles to come to terms with a rapidly changing world and to find a meaningful way to integrate with others and realize their own potential. She has won many prizes and has a number of her books translated into English she said her influences are Dag Solstad, Bretold Brecht and Louis-Ferdinand Celine. This is the first book by her I have read.

A few days later a woman phined and introduced herself as the interperter for “your tennt Slawomira Tzebuchwaskai”. She spoke broken, but clear coherrent Norweigan. It was concerning her tenant’s housing situation. She said and she wanting to meet with Alama. And Alma was delighted and said yes because she wanted nothing more that to resolve the tenant’s housing situation. The interpreter would visit. Alma in a few days, and the pole would be there as well, almaunderstood, so did this mean that she was moving back in ?

After her husband has to return to Poland she is left as a single parent Alam still willing to help ?

The book follows the life of a divorced textile artist. She lives in an old villa that has an apartment that she has rented out once unsuccessfully so when she lets a Polish Family move in she sees them as steady and she starts work on a large commission doing a tapestry to celebrate a centenary of women’s suffrage in Norway. But then as the Famil have kids and things start to happen like the Husband has to return to Poland leaving the wife and the kids alone in the apartment but they start knawing at Alma like the Mouse that her Polish neighbor says she has but won’t take the traps out like this and other little things start making Alma regret her decision. this leads to a series of letters rent rise changes in the size and description of the apartment it size. This carries on will she get her house back will she finish her commission?

Alma wrote the long-planned letter to her tenant in order to make same demands of her as she would have done of a Norwegian by informing her of the Norwegian attitude to electricty consumption. To be more conscious of her usage and turn down the radiators at night, sort her rubbish for recycling and not mixpaper and cardboard with other waste, and she also requested that she parked her car alongside Alma’s and always in the tarmac rather than on the ground between the treesfurther down where Alma wanted the grass to grow in the summer .

The crack in their relationshipo start after her husband isn’t their little things that build up over time.

 

This is done exactly what the description of her writing does in the book we have Alma she is a fair mind woman in her eyes her kids come ever so often. especially Christmas but in your heart you feel she is only renting the apartment for the money and no matter who was there she would eventually pick fault and her we see this she wants to be fair but at the back of her mind is the wanting a quiet life and the things like clearing the snow which when she contact the landlord advice line she does this a number of times not wanting to be seen as a bad landlord. This is all about manners and trying to be polite but there is a simmering undercurrent slowly growing in Alma that silent anger that is hidden just under the surface we see it building I was reminded of the few books I read by Anne Tyler a writer that also is great at capturing a woman at a certain age that simmers so well like Alma does here. Have you read Hjorth?