Literature and Fiction · Hardback

Echoes of the City - The Shadow Book

Norwegian title: Byens spor - Skyggeboken

Lars Saabye Christensen

Lars Saabye Christensen has put his ear to the conch of the city and listened to the sound within. With finely tuned sensitivity he listens to every detail. He sees the light casting a shadow one way as the sun is setting over the city that was, and the other way over a city waking up to a new time. Inevitably the question arises: Whom are we who are living in this city, this country and this time - and who will we become?

At the centre of the third part of Echoes of the City we find Maj Kristoffersen. Her destiny is intimately interwoven with Oslo and its streets; but not as much as the people she shares the city with. First and foremost her children Jesper and Stine, as well as her fellow women of the Red Cross, the invisible social backbone of Fagerborg borough. The children are grown up and times are changing. Hopes and dreams are challenged by a world no longer on track. Growing pains affect them all as new doors open and the old ones close.

‘It is gripping, in some passages glittering. And only a reader with a heart of steel could fail to be deeply moved…’DAGBLADET

‘Lars Saabye Christensen allows himself digressions and diversions in the last novel in his Oslo trilogy Echoes of the City. This sets the three-volume work slightly off-kilter. Just what it takes to make the trilogy necessary. Yes, necessary.’NRK

‘The author serves up metaphors and images that will make the reader cheer.’FÆDRELANDSVENNEN

‘The Shadow Book is a very powerful novel, which stays with you for a long time. And yes, it is a bit funny too.’ADRESSEAVISEN

‘… an emotional roller-coaster’ VG

‘With The Shadow Book, Lars Saabye Christensen has concluded his trilogy in a way that ensures Echoes of the City will stand as a masterpiece in the oeuvre of this soon-to-be 66-year-old Oslo man.’ BOK 365 6/6

‘Echoes of the City is a vast monument to the past and the present day. …it works, the whole thing. Echoes of the City – The Shadow Book is a brilliant conclusion to the trilogy about Oslo and Norway in the decades after the war.’DAGSAVISEN

‘Lars Saabye Christensen writes warming literature of reminiscence, full of linguistic treats.’ AFTENPOSTEN