Child Wonder

Finn lives with his mother in an apartment block in a working-class suburb of Oslo. It is 1961, a time when 'men became boys and housewives women', the year the Berlin Wall is erected and Yuri Gagarin becomes the first man to travel into space. Life is electrical, beautiful and stubbornly social-democratic. One day a mysterious half-sister appears 'with an atom-charge in a light blue suitcase', and she turns his life upside-down. Over an everlasting summer, Finn attempts to grasp the incomprehensible adult world and his place within it. His mother appears to carry a painful secret, but one which pushes them ever further apart. And why is his new sister so different from every other child?

Child Wonder is a powerful and unsentimental portrait of childhood, a coming-of-age novel full of light and warmth. Through the eyes of a child Roy Jacobsen has captured the complexities of his characters through their actions, and has produced an immensely uplifting novel that shines with humanity.

“'The kind of novel that never leaves you' Kristin Ewins, Times Literary Supplement.”

'[An] intricately worked novel, as rich in detail and implication as it is classical in construction and stylistic restraint' Paul Binding, Independent. Independent
'A gloriously intelligent novel that is so rewarding, funny, sad and human that the only advice to be given is to read it' Eileen Battersby, Irish Times. Irish Times
Times Literary Supplement

Roy Jacobsen has twice been nominated for the Nordic Council's Literary Award: for Seierherrene in 1991, and Frost in 2003, and in 2009 he was shortlisted for the Dublin Impac Award for his novel The Burnt-Out Town of Miracles. The Unseen, the first in a bestselling historial series, was shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize in 2017

Finn lives with his mother in a working-class suburb of Oslo. It is 1961, before oil, before anyone had any money at all. One day a mysterious half-sister appears, turning their lives upside down - why is she so different from every other child? Then his mother takes a lodger. Finn is enthralled by the bad language and Bakelite TV he brings with him, but the newcomer has his own plans for the family. And throughout the long summer, Finn cannot help feeling his mother is keeping a powerful secret from him, pushing them further and further apart.

Finn lives with his mother in an apartment block in a working-class suburb of Oslo. It is 1961, a time when 'men became boys and housewives women', the year the Berlin Wall is erected and Yuri Gagarin becomes the first man to travel into space. Life is electrical, beautiful and stubbornly social-democratic. One day a mysterious half-sister appears 'with an atom-charge in a light blue suitcase', and she turns his life upside-down. Over an everlasting summer, Finn attempts to grasp the incomprehensible adult world and his place within it. His mother appears to carry a painful secret, but one which pushes them ever further apart. And why is his new sister so different from every other child? Child Wonder is a powerful and unsentimental portrait of childhood, a coming-of-age novel full of light and warmth. Through the eyes of a child Roy Jacobsen has captured the complexities of his characters through their actions, and has produced an immensely uplifting novel that shines with humanity.

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