In the Wake A Novel Author:Per Petterson Like Paul Auster's Book of Illusions, Per Petterson's masterful American debut novel tells the story of a writer whose life stands still after a terrible accident takes the lives of his parents and younger brothers. The grief and guilt he feels over having survived is too overwhelming, and work on his novel stalls as he moves through life... more » in a cold haze. Arvid's only human contact is with his Kurdish neighbor and with a woman whom he glimpses in a flat across the road. Then, slowly, the memories begin to return. He begins to write again.
Poignant, restrained and at times unbearably moving, In the Wake takes on terrible tragedy as one man senses the beauty of the natural world -- at times our only source of solace.« less