Ave Eva

Book excerpt: Fiction. 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. 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 his past mistakes, both his own and those of his family. Translated by Frankie Belle Shakelford.