A Hundred Years

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.

Foreign sales:

Estonia, Eesti Raamat Publishers

“Wassmo skilfully balances the social-realistic description of the different aspects of human trade with the magical. […] With this story Wassmo delivers her most gender political novel to date. Beyond the indisputable necessity of the work, it suits her to have this aspect of her authorship strengthened, especially when it´s done with such convincing elegance delivered by a world-class writer.”

Politiken/DK

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I am about eleven years old when I learn how dangerous words can be. Like C.G. Jung, whom I naturally haven´t yet read, I burn things. Things he has touched. I put needles in his wool socks. I knot his shoe laces together so tightly that they have to be cut apart. I boldly leave a sheath knife on his shaving dish. I cut long strips off his windbreaker. To no avail. My mother has to patch the jacket together. It´s strange he doesn´t scold me. Not for that. But for other things of course.

He talks all the time without saying anything. Yells at us, without making us more afraid than we already are. Hjordis mends the windbreaker. She doesn´t scold us either. Hjordis doesn´t talk much unless she has something to say.

Only when I see that the boat carrying him away from the island is far out in the water do I feel safe …

This book is a quest for my ancestral mothers and their men. There are many family members crying out to be seen. Some are kept at a distance, or stand in the shadows. It´s more demanding to describe him than the others. He destroys – creates chaos and darkness. Has the power to ruin a silly little pleasure or a positive thought. Only after his death do I begin the important task of seeing him as a human being. Not in order to forgive, but in order to save myself.

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