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Ave Eva

A powerful novel from the North, winner of national book awards both in Norway and Sweden. Its hero is Edmund Saknevik, orphan, outcast and seeker, who has returned from exile to Norway to farm his ancestral estate. The country he finds is transformed: friends have matured and made their careers, foreign influences have supplanted native ones and oil interests ravage the landscape. Yet the past endures in the traditional celebrations, the prominence of the church and the bitter memories of the Nazi occupation. People still love, plot and keep grim secrets.

Edmund’s attempt to reclaim his history, his language and his purpose in life, as well as to preserve his country’s culture and environment, retells the timeless and universal story of a man seeking to regain paradise, to make a home in the world and to redeem past mistakes, both his own and those of his family. Ave Eva is a dark, brooding and yet brightly courageous work with the power to speak to any reader, whatever his or her homeland.

Praise for Edvard Hoem:

”Through Ave Eva Edvard Hoem has lifted a corner of Hamsun’s heritage … a wonderful novel – a fairytale”
(Dagens Nyheter, Sweden)

”a powerful and exciting epic … He confirms his position as one of our time’s most important poets, and with his pen paints enfolding images … Never before has Hoem populated his canvas with such fascinating figures … With my warmest recommendations: Read this novel!”
(Adresseavisen)

”A magnificent swansong … an enormous novel with epic dimensions … a masterpiece, written with astonishing clarity and discipline, but above all with warmth and generous respect for the fragile mankind”
(Morgenbladet)

”Hoem’s best book … Edvard Hoem has really gone all out with this work. It is exuberant and fantastic, entertaining and beautiful … logically composed and with sharp reflections”
(Klassekampen)

”Great writing … a piece which will survive not only this autumn but several more to come. We are dealing with a great story, told in feisty tones, composed in a way that impresses. The characters grip us. The problems are engaging and important for our own lives”
(Aftenposten)

”Hoem reveals himself as a true master of story telling. He has such a supremely secure and intricate hold on both language and form … one can only let the superlatives reign free”
(Vårt land)

First published: 1987, Forlaget Oktober
Edvard Hoem: Biography and bibliography

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