Replacement (Norwegian Literature) - Softcover

Replacement, his only novel, published two years before Ulven’s suicide, is a miniature symphony, wherein the perspectives of fifteen unrelated characters are united into what seems a single narrative voice: each personality, having reached a point of stasis in their lives, directing the book in turn. These people reminisce, dream, reflect, observe, and talk to themselves; each stuck in their respective traps, each fantasizing about how their lives might have turned out differently. A masterpiece of compression and confession, Replacement dramatizes the tension between the concrete realities we think we cannot alter, and our interior lives, where we feel anything might still be possible.

Kerri A. Pierce is a translator focusing on German, Danish, Dutch, Portuguese, Spanish, Norwegian, and Swedish. She is the translator of Lars Svendsen's A Philosophy of Evil, Mela Hartwig's Am I a Redundant Human Being?, Kjersti A. Skomsvold's The Faster I Walk, the Smaller I Am, and other novels. Widely considered one of the greatest postwar poets in Norway,Tor Ulven (born 1953) was also one of its greatest innovators in prose, influencing countless other fiction writers, not least Jon Fosse and Stig S-terbakken. Ulven committed suicide in 1995.