Boat in the Evening

Description

The Boat In The Evening is the last book by the acclaimed Norwegian writer Tarjei Vesaas. On its publication in Scandinavia it was quickly acclaimed as the culmination of Vesaas's work, and placed its author for the third time among the finalists for the Nobel Prize. A crane colony arrives at its breeding ground to play out a delicately drama that ends with the rarely-observed ceremony of the ritual dance. All is observed by a transfixed child who has frozen into his background and become a piece of nature himself, "a pale tussock in a windcheater". In The Boat In The Evening the author, with a kind of cinematic impressionism, voyages back to episodes from childhood, adolecence and maturity as well as making speculative forays into the unknown. Unfolding in a series of delicate sketches that record the changing moods of human experience, The Boat In The Evening is at once pervaded by a sense of melancholy and a sensuous appreciation of nature. A profound and beautiful book, it is the summation of a literary artist's first-hand experience and observation of rural life - of landscape and people.

Tarjei Vesaas was the author of several novels, volumes of poetry, and a book of short stories, which was awarded an international prize at Venice in 1952. He was awarded several other prizes, and was a candidate for the Nobel Prize in 1964, 1968, and again in 1969.

'A book of great strength and beauty.' - The Times; 'A rare kind of masterpiece, and another proof that the spirit that of poetry can find truer expression in prose than verse. If Wordsworth were alive he would be quarrying such veins in such a way.' - Daily Telegraph 'A rare mixture of creative vitality, conviction and artistry... What makes the book for me is the way he [Vesaas] establishes natural presences - trees, wind, water, rocks, ice - as not just characters in their own right but as somehow possessing more right, more reality than the human ones.' - Guardian