• Everything Like Before
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Archipelago Books

Everything Like Before

Everything Like Before

by Kjell Askildsen, translated from the Norwegian by Seán Kinsella

$21.00
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A man and a woman in a quiet, remote house, an old man on a park bench, an estranged brother in a railway café – Kjell Askildsen’s characters are surrounded by absence. Filled with disquiet, and longing, they walk to a fjord, they smoke, they drink on a veranda, they listen to conversations that drift through open windows. Small flashes like the promise of a sunhat, a nail in a cherry tree, or a raised flag, reveal the interminable space between desire and reality in which Askildsen’s characters are forever suspended. Widely recognized as one of the greatest modern short-story writers, with unadorned prose and a dark humor, Askildsen captures life as it really is, the worlds of his characters uncanny mirrors of our own.

Additional Book Information

Series: Archipelago Books
ISBN: 9781939810946
Pages: 275
Publication Date:

Praise

The lengthier works shine brightest, among them “A Sudden Liberating Thought,” in which a Beckett-like series of encounters between two old men becomes a discourse on euthanasia; and “Mardon’s Night,” where three people’s thoughts and actions blur in enigmatic blocks of text.... this definitive volume brims with stellar material.
—Publisher's Weekly

These three dozen stories and vignettes by the venerable Norwegian writer range from bleak to darkly comic . . . [Everything Like Before] features mainly spare prose exploring the distances and conflicts between people linked by blood, marriage, or circumstance . . . [Kjell Askildsen] is a fine craftsman who offers lighter moments amid the Nordic gloom and an unrelenting intelligence.
—Kirkus, Starred Review

There is something so beautifully off-kilter about these stories—a luminous peculiarity that reminds us that strange writing is the only true writing about the world.
—Daniel Handler, author of A Series of Unfortunate Events

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