AshehougAgency

Reunion and Lament

This is Sven Kærup Bjørneboe’s third "picture" of his fictionalised coastal society on Storøy island following Skerry Folk and Skerry Mass.

The picture is communicated in the form of an elegy full of humour, satire and self-irony. Among portrayals of the major and minor events taking place on the island we can read about how the priest pulls a biblical donkey into the church on Palm Sunday, about the German who offers a shaman course for women searching for spiritual guidance and about how a Centre Party man joins the Progress Party.

The islanders’ way of life and the cultural landscape of the skerries change, but the narrator, too, is in the process of change as he enters old age. Reunion and Lament serves up a rare mix of the burlesque and the lyrical, of irony and sweetness, wonderful writing in fact.

First published: 2005, Aschehoug Fiction

Sven Kærup Bjørneboe: Biography and bibliography