Innocentia Park av Ingvar Ambjørnsen (Innbundet)

Innocentia Park (Innbundet)

Author:

Ingvar Ambjørnsen

Norwegian title: Innocentia Park
Author:
Binding: Innbundet
Year: 2004
Pages: 222
Publisher: Cappelen Damm
Språk: Bokmål
ISBN/EAN: 9788202240905
Overview Innocentia Park

Innocentia Park is a novel that differs from others by Ingvar Ambjørnsen. The narrative takes place in Germany, and the narrator, a German property magnate, is a whole new personality for this authorship. Innocentia Park is an existential novel about fatigue, disruption and decadence.

And later, as I am walking home, the city seems transformed, renewed. The pungent smell of the wet soil as well as the wet asphalt. For weeks on end the sun has been warming the dust, heating it up, and now the dust is letting all its fragrances go in the mix that is the smell of late summer, wet late summer night. And as with a stroke of magic the wind (yes, the wind!) makes a crack in the clouds and reveal the moon once more, the great bit silvery moon; now lighting the river and street in a silvery light, and I am walking there splashing in my black moccasins; wet to the core and quite happy. For it does not take more. You bump into a little brown bear of a woman that you have not seen for a few days, the sluices of heaven open, and you´re standing there in the doorway of a pub, watching her dance in the street, while the rain pours down. Astrid. Without a P. The one I will never touch.

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More books by Ingvar Ambjørnsen:

Author Ingvar Ambjørnsen

Ingvar Ambjørnsen (b. 1956) is considered to be one of the great storytellers of contemporary Norwegian literature. Since his literary début in 1981, Ambjørnsen has written twentyfour novels and three collections of short stories, as well as essay collections and several books for children and youth. He has won a number of awards, including the Riverton Prize, the Brage Award, the Booksellers’ Award and the Riksmål Prize. His works are sold to ... countries. Many of them have been adapted into films with great success. The movie Elling, based on Ambjørnsen’s novels Fugledansen and Brødre i blodet, was nominated to an Oscar in 2001, and Elling the theatre play has appeared on stage in several theatres around Europe to great acclaim.

Ambjørnsen’s books are often characterized by powerful, realistic descriptions of the seamier side of life. The protagonists tend to be outsiders – described with sympathetic insight and warmth. Loneliness and friendship are expressed in a concise literary style. His break-through novel from 1986, Hvite niggere (White Trash), is an excellent example of this. It is a crass exposure of the plight of that unfortunate soul seeking out an existence in sub-cultures.

Still, most readers will know Ambjørnsen’s work through a quartet of novels about the odd-ball Elling. Utsikt til paradiset (A Vision of Paradise) from 1993, Fugledansen (The Chicken Dance) from 1995, Brødre i blodet (Beyond the Great Indoors) from 1996 and Elsk meg i morgen (Love Me Tomorrow) from 1999 established Ambjørnsen as one of the most widely read Norwegian authors in the past few decades, with half a million copies in print. Ambjørnsen introduced something entirely new with this quartet. The books contain less external plot, but proportionately more crazy inventiveness and absurd, gentle humour. The novels depict the loneliness of their protagonist – and the dream of friendship and romantic love. It is an entertaining, thought-provoking read. Some reviewers has called Elling “the Norwegian Forest Gump”.

Awards
The Cappelen Prize 1988.
The City of Hamburg Grant.
The City of Lübeck Grant.
The best book for Young Readers of the 1980's for Døden på Oslo S (Death in Oslo Central Station) 1991.
The Brage Prize 1995 for Fugledansen (The Bird Dance).
The Booksellers' Prize 1996 for Brødre i blodet (Beyond the Great Indoors).
Oslo City Cultural Prize 2001.
Anders Jahre's Cultural Prize 2004.
The Salvation Army's Booth Prize 2004.

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Foreign rights
Denmark
Switzerland
Turkey

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