The Ice Palace by Tarjei Vesaas, trans. Elizabeth Rokkan

“Vesaas’s laconic sentences are as cold and simple as ice – and as fantastic.” – The Telegraph

We’re meeting on the first Friday this month rather than the third, to stay clear of Christmas madness. The book, however, at 144 pages, is short!

First published in Norwegian in 1963, The Ice Palace is a short novel set over one winter in a remote Norwegian village. Eleven-year-old Unn arrives to live with her aunt, carrying a grief she won’t talk about and keeping the other children at a distance. Only Siss, the most popular girl in her class, gets through to her, and the two form an intense bond. Then Unn goes alone to a frozen waterfall the children call the ice palace, and doesn’t come home.

Vesaas was nominated for the Nobel Prize almost every year for two decades but never won. He wrote in Nynorsk, the minority form of written Norwegian.

Max Porter called it a book he’s surprised isn’t the most famous book in the world.

“How simple this novel is. How subtle. How strong.” – Doris Lessing
“A haunting story, full of ice and wind and poetry.” – The Guardian