Hi everybody - Jon here. We had a problem with our site database and had to revert to a backup version ... so this forum post got deleted. Here it is again!
Looking for a book that is driving me crazy
I read about a book on some website this past week or two. It's been translated into English from another language...I think it's European. It's about two brothers and a tragedy and it's a bestseller in Europe. Of course now I can't find the website where I read about it and I am going nuts. Thanks in advance if you can answer me. Carolee
Jessica had answered as follows
Hi Carolee,
Isn't that frustrating... titles (and everything else) escape my mind all the time.
We consulted the staff and conducted an Internet search to see if we could find your missing book; we're stumped! Do you have any more details that could help us out?
Best,
Jessica Teisch
(Bookmarks Managing Editor)
Me too
This may or may not help Carolee. I heard an interview with an author - I believe he was Scandinavian - and I wanted to read his book. His name is something that sounded like Valgren, but I've tried to find his book on all the usual places and have come up empty. I tried several different spellings, nothing. Anybody know who this might be? This author is popular in Europe, but new to the US. Harper
Looking for European book
There is a wonderful Norwegian book, Out Stealing Horses, by Per Petterson, that arrived in the U.S. this year in translation. It was a big seller in Europe, and has received acclaim here. It's about two friends, not two brothers though. I hesitate to tell more. It's a short book, and very worth reading.
Posted the request on Fiction_L
I just posted the request on Fiction_L, which is a listserv for librarians. Hopefully the collective brain will sort out some suggestions :D
Responses from Fiction_L
Here are some of the responses from Fiction_L:
"Call me crazy - Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamzov. I'm sure that's not the title in question. OTOh - maybe there's a European Oprah who's resurrecting
older titles..."
"I haven't read the book but wonder if it's The Half Brother by Lars Saabye Christensen - translated from the Norwegian a couple of years ago. http://www.amazon.ca/Half-Brother-Lars-Christensen/dp/1559707151"
"This may be "Secret" by Philippe Grimbert. It's currently one of the top sellers on Amazon France, & is due to be released in English on January 1 (according to Amazon). It's a tragedy about a man who creates an imaginary brother, and then discovers that the brother is real. Here is the description from Amazon France, via Babelfish (the book may be a tragedy, but the translation is hilarious!):
Often the children invent a family, another origin, other parents. The
narrator of this book, him, invented a brother. An elder brother, more
beautiful, more extremely, than it evokes in front of the buddies of
holidays, the foreigners, those which will not check... And then one day,
it discovers the truth, impressive, terrifying almost. And it is then a
whole family, heavy history, complex, which it falls on to him to
reconstitute. A tragic history which brings back it to times of the
Holocaust, and of the million disappeared on which fell down a cover of
silence. Psychoanalyst, Philippe Grimbert came to the novel with the Small
Dress from Paul. With this new book, crowned in 2004 by the Goncourt price
of the high-school pupils and in 2005 by the Great literary Price of the
readers of It, he shows with as much rigour than of emotion how much the
powers novel can go far in the exploration of the secrecies to the?uvre in
our lives."
Maybe Arturo Perez-Reverte?
Sounds a bit like Arturo Perez-Reverte's Purity of Blood. In any case, Perez-Reverte's books, translated from Spanish in a couple of different series (this installment's from the Captain Alatriste books), have made quite an impression on European and American readers alike and are certainly worth a look. I especially enjoyed the author's Club Dumas (filmed a few years ago as The Ninth Gate, starring Johnny Depp and directed by Roman Polanski) and The Flanders Panel. Hope this helps, Carolee.
Regards,
Patrick Smith
(Bookmarks Associate Editor)