It was a list of already famous books; long books with big messages. War, terrorism, violence, crime, a miscarriage of justice, a crisis of faith.
There were tricks, period pastiche and topicality and style. But the book that won was quiet, subtle - about a life and happenings that have stalked it. Norwegian writer Per Petterson has won this year's International Impac Dublin Literary Award with Out Stealing Horses, a beautiful, melancholic narrative about abandonment. It was always one of the favourites, and the only novel in translation.
In winning the prize, now in its 12th year, Petterson held off the challenge of the 2003 Nobel literature laureate, J M Coetzee, whose novel, Slow Man, was also about one's man life. Having worked as a librarian, Petterson must have been destined to win this award, which draws its submissions from an international panel of libraries. Few winners of any literary prize have seemed more nervous. Few winners of any prize appear to have pleased so many.
Born in 1953, Petterson also worked as a bookseller. He published his first book, a collection of short stories, in 1987. Since then, he has become a full-time writer and to date three of his five novels have been published in English translation: To Siberia, In The Wake, and Out Stealing Horses, which impressed on publication in 2003 and won two Norwegian prizes. This English translation by Anne Born appeared in 2005 and won the British Independent Foreign Fiction Prize from a very strong shortlist that included Hungarian Magda Szabo's The Door.
Out Stealing Horses is both European and curiously North American. There are echoes of Richard Ford's Wildlife (1990). In common with the US master William Maxwell's classic So Long, See You Tomorrow (1980), Petterson's novel tells the story of an older man who looks back on his childhood, and the regret which haunts him. The narrator is Trond who, at 67, has not only retired, he has retreated from life. His wife is dead and he seems to have abandoned his daughters, one of whom tracks him down.
He has left the city and is making a home for himself in the countryside, near a lake. His days are filled by a series of domestic rituals. Of great importance to him is Dickens. There is also his radio. In the early mornings he listens to broadcasts about cricket, "a game I have never seen played and never will see". There is regret but no self-pity. Petterson's achievement lies in establishing a tone of calm reflection with flashes of anger.
Bewildered by the number of years that have raced by, Trond is thinking and remembering while remaining alert to the present and chores needed to maintain a house through winter. There is a powerful sense of place. The watery landscape is almost eerie.
The small house is a sanctuary but it has its ghosts, and being there reminds him of another cabin in which he stayed with his mysterious father during the summer of 1948 when he was 15. Trond recalls his 15-year-old self and his pal Jon. Things happen. Both his father and his friend disappear. Trond is a study of a reluctant survivor. This is a special book, very sad, very real. Just as in his previous novel, In The Wake, Petterson has created a sympathetic narrator who is looking for answers through the shadow of memory.
Out Stealing Horses now joins a distinguished, representative group of international novels to win this prize which includes Herta Müller's Land of Green Plums, Alistair MacLeod's No Great Mischief, Orhan Pamuk's My Name is Red, Tahar Ben Jelloun's This Blinding Absence of Light and David Malouf's Remembering Babylon which won the inaugural Impac Dublin Literary Award in 1996. The prize is worth €100,000 of which €75,000 goes to Petterson, with his inspired translator, Anne Born, taking a much deserved €25,000. Petterson will be celebrated tomorrow in a Dublin Writer's Festival event at the Project Theatre at 6pm.