The Ice Palace - (Pushkin Press Classics) by Tarjei Vesaas (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

An intense friendship between 2 young girls turns tragic when one gets lost in a frozen waterfall's ice chambers in this dreamlike Norwegian masterpiece

Features a new introduction by Karl Ove Knausgaard

In rural Norway, 11-year-old Siss, socially at ease and popular among her peers, finds herself drawn to the new girl in class, Unn. Unn is shy and strange, but holds a magnetic power for her more gregarious classmate. Their friendship is cemented after a dreamy afternoon spent gazing into each other's eyes in the mirror, exchanging hinted secrets and perhaps pieces of their souls.

But the next day, Unn, embarrassed by her new intimacy with Siss, skips school and goes to explore a series of ice caves around a nearby waterfall. Lost in the labyrinthine chambers, she eventually freezes to death, thinking of Siss as she loses feeling and drifts into the dark. When Siss learns Unn is missing and likely dead, she is determined to keep alive the memory of the friend she so briefly knew - sometimes it feels as though she too is locked in the glistening chambers of the ice palace. It is only when spring comes and the ice palace melts that Siss finds herself able to let go of Unn, and reconnect to those around her.

A profound exploration of grief, and an intensely lyrical coming-of-age story, this novel is the masterpiece of one of Norway's greatest writers.

About the Author

Tarjei Vesaas (1897-1970) was born and died on a farm in the isolated Telemark district of southern Norway. A modernist who wrote in the minority form of Norwegian, Nynorsk, he was thrice nominated for the Nobel Prize, and won the prestigious Nordic Council Literature Prize. The author of more than twenty-five novels, five books of poetry, and several plays and short stories, he is regarded as one of Norway's greatest twentieth-century writers. His other fictional masterpiece, The Birds, is also being published by Pushkin Press.

Elizabeth Rokkan (1925-2016) was a professor of English at the University of Bergen, and one of her era's foremost translators of Norwegian literature.