Per Petterson

Who is Per Petterson?

Per Petterson is a Norwegian novelist. His debut book was Aske i munnen, sand i skoa, a collection of short stories. He has since published a number of novels to good reviews. To Siberia, set in the Second World War, was published in English in 1998 and nominated for the Nordic Council's Literature Prize. I kjølvannet, translated as In the Wake, is a young man's story of losing his family in the Scandinavian Star ferry disaster in 1990; it won the Brage Prize for 2000. His 2008 novel Jeg forbanner tidens elv won The Nordic Council's Literature Prize for 2009, with an English translation published in 2010.

His breakthrough novel was Ut og stjæle hester, which was awarded two top literary prizes in Norway – the Norwegian Critics Prize for Literature and the Booksellers’ Best Book of the Year Award. The 2005 English language translation, Out Stealing Horses, was awarded the 2006 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize and the 2007 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award