Literature and Fiction · Hardback

Master of none

Norwegian title: Ingens herre

Eivind Hofstad Evjemo

Rakel runs a chicken farm where she lives alone in the main house. The barracks houses an ever-changing selection of 4-5 male workers, mostly foreigners. Krystof, Mustada, Arif, and the newly arrived Erwan at the moment. Each of them has their own place and task in the barracks.

Chicken Herd Number 88 has just been sent to the slaughterhouse. Erwan joins in on the prep to receive a new herd with hundreds of chickens who will be raised to shortly become thighs, breasts, wings and minced meat.

Author Eivind Hofstad Evjemo writes a beautiful and messy drama. A mini society where Rakel is the boss who sits alone at night and sometimes drinks too much wine, where the boys in the barracks both support each other and fight each other while trying to retain a private life in bunk beds, without any private space. As always, Evjemo’s forte is found in the relationships – what happens between people who have to live under the same roof, who have to live alone in a big house, who has to tackle literal and figurative crap and animal death together, who work in the same rhythm, who need to earn money and create a meaningful life.

One night the four men gather around the table in the barrack for spiritualism: They call on the dead. Without considering who might then return to the farm.

This is the second book in Eivind Hofstad Evjemo’s trilogy of books about agricultural life and the farmer.