I Curse the River of Time

Everything goes wrong for thirtysomething Arvid Jansen in one autumnal weekend in 1989. With a backdrop of the crumbling of Eastern communism, he is divorcing, watching his mother die from cancer and feels lost.

This compact boiler room book gives us a glimpse into two intense days in his life. Everything is changing and he isn’t quite willing to keep on top of it. He retreats, tries to break free of patterns, tries to hold on to regularity in the face of change, and most of all find himself and his direction in life again. After the radical Out Stealing Horses, this follow-up from Per Petterson loses none of the politics but tempers it with nostalgia, powerful memories and experiences that give Arvid a glimpse into the youthful verve he has lost. The precise language and sparing use of flowery language give this attempt to curate a mother-son relationship through the vestiges of time and here and now and then and before give us a bittersweet, poignant and sometimes laugh-out-loud funny book about preparing yourself to lose everything.