Meet Lars Ramslie - Selected Title Author
We are happy to present our selected title author Lars Ramslie. He has written The Mountain, the Gun, the Lake (original title: Fjellet, geværet, vannet). The book is one of NORLA’s Selected Titles of the spring 2023.
Read our interview with Lars here.
What is the book about?
This novel looks at a single day in the summer of 1983: A nine-year-old boy named Lars has joined his father on a vacation to what has been the family farm since the sixteenth century. His grandfather has recently passed away and his father lost his allodial rights. Today, the father wakes his son early in the morning. Without explanation and without bringing anything besides a weapon – the father carries the shot and the son the air rifle – the father asks his son to follow him up the mountainside behind the villa. But the father is so strong and walks so quickly and the son is so small, so puny…
In what becomes a sort of trial, a ritual all of the family’s sons have gone through over the generations, we get to know the possible reasons for why the father lost his allodial rights. It’s as though the father is living in a sort of state of denial, unable to admit that the enormous property has been lost. The rite of passage becomes a kind of preparation – and hope – that the son will take over someday anyway. That he’ll prove himself worthy, and learn to survive in the mountains without any food or equipment.
At the same time, it’s also a portrait of the closeness they share – a care of sorts, a love of sorts A desire for good from a person who’s started to disintegrate from within, to lose himself.
What inspired you to write this book?
My father died young. I was well underway with another novel, but on the day I passed him in age, I suddenly decided to write a novel for him. One novel written in one day about one (relatively) good day. Little did I know, but the process would take years. The result was four days and four books that are both patricide and a small apology. My ex shared something written by Alejandro Jodorowsky with me – a text about the necessity of patricide as a kind of alchemical process. The apology is also a political one; Norway has a terrible history when it comes to substance abuse and one of the highest overdose statistics in Europe. I wanted to show the complexity in the story of an individual behind this statistic and make a case for new thinking about much-needed reform. The challenge was to turn the specific into something universal.
Read more
See full presentation of the book here
Read more about the author here
See all NORLA’s Selected Titles for the spring 2023 here
