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Translated from the Norwegian by Elizabeth Rokkan
Sixteen-year old Sissel and her young brother Olaf have been
left minding their parents’ farm for the night. But when
a strange family descends on them, lost, in a broken-down
car, the children have to cope alone.
Grete, who is in labour, is accompanied by her distraught
husband, childish father-in-law, a mother-in-law who has pretended
to be paralysed and deaf for two years, and a mysterious girl,
Gudrun, who seems to have stepped directly out of one of Olaf’s
dreams.
Vesaas’s novel is a beautifully observed portrait of
adolescent experience. But by the end of the spring night
there has been not only a birth but a death in the house,
and adolescence has vanished forever.
‘Tarjei Vesaas could write books which breathed the almost
mystical union between man and countryside.’ — Daily
Telegraph
‘The greatest Norwegian writer of his time.’ —
Scotsman
‘Vesaas achieves his effects with a powerful economy
of words and his style is graphic and highly evocative.’
— Guardian
‘Vesaas conjures brilliantly from the sombre north.’
— Times Literary Supplement
TARJEI VESAAS was born in 1897 in the remote rural Telemark
district of Norway, where he spent most of his life. Throughout
his life he published several novels, volumes of poetry and
a book of short stories which was awarded an international
prize at Venice in 1952. He was awarded several other prizes
and was a candidate for the Nobel Prize in 1964, 1968 and
again in 1969. He died in 1970, his reputation as the leading
Nordic writer firmly established.
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