A Hundred Years
Hundre år
A Hundred Years is a novel about the lives of Sara Susanne, Elida and Hjørdis, Herbjørg Wassmo´s great grandmother, grandmother and mother. It is about the men they wanted and the men they got, and about the children they gave birth to. It is also the story of a little girl who hides in the barn to avoid him. She has a yellow pencil that she sharpens with a whittling knife.
This girl was born in 1942, exactly a hundred years after her great grandmother, the strong-willed Sara Susanne who served as a model for the portrait of the angel in the altar piece that today stands in Lofoten Cathedral. A Hundred Years is the tale of these women, of their toil and deprivation, of liberty and their longing for another existence.
The narrator was born the same year as the author, and she gives us access to a secret that sheds light over the connection between life and fiction. Motifs and themes from almost all of Wassmo´s oeuvre are collected here, all carried forth by a deep human knowledge that ensures that the fictive characters never seem one dimensional
Main Selection in the BNB Book Club and the Bestseller Club (CappelenDamm).
