Thorvald Steen

Shot in the foot by its translation.

Usually it’s hard to tell – do I blame the translation or the original? – but I was fairly certain here. It read awfully. It’s written in an impressionistic way, and my guess is that the original uses a creative grammar... I’m the first to support creative grammar in fiction, believe me, because people don’t talk or think in correct English. However, whatever artistic effects were meant, the translation only looks like bad grammar, and bad sense, and non-consecutive thought from sentence to sentence that no doubt had a point. The style is one of severe brevity – where every sentence has a point. I can just imagine how this might work in the original. I can even imagine a psychological acuity in the original. Waving from the other side of the bridge. Maybe not, though – I’m trying to read into this what there might be.

I cannot recommend this, except to Richard 1 completists. I’d have liked to – I bought it blind (there’s no ‘look inside’ function) simply to give a neglected book a chance. Didn’t pay off in this case.

It’s a dark Richard: a fanatic who comes to doubt, a lame human life. Sounds intriguing. Try it in Norwegian, if you can.… (more)