That Kamala Varma survived that first wave of hysteria, the huge spate of publicity which can inundate and all but drown anyone who achieves international success, was due not so much to her own level-headedness as to the book itself. Because The Tree of Love was – in the words of one reviewer – the sort of story which no one could explain. ‘It is a book that strikes straight at the heart of everyone who opens it,’ he wrote, ‘a story which sinks in and lodges inside the reader like a vital organ.’ Not long ago an American literary critic declared that The Tree of Love had done as much for our view of love as Charles Darwin’s Origin of the Species did for our view of mankind. And that may be true. Because readers of Kamala Varma’s novel would like to believe that love can evolve, that love is not necessarily the same today as it was four thousand years ago. That it encompasses hitherto unknown possibilities. So too with the heart, Kamala Varma said: the human heart also undergoes change.
Overnight Kamala Varma became a world-famous woman. And a rich woman. Even in Norway, that fortress of a country which had tried for so long to kick her out, she gained recognition. People would turn and stare blatantly at her in the smallest, most out-of-the-way places, and not merely because of her colour now. Around the time when Jonas was released from prison, Kamala started writing a new novel – one that went beyond Victoria, she told Jonas – while still travelling all over the world, promoting new translations of The Tree of Love.
What did all this have to do with Jonas Wergeland? It had a great deal to do with Jonas Wergeland, even though Kamala Varma’s love story was not about him in any way. You see, The Tree of Love, a work praised to the skies by people all over the world, was dedicated to Jonas Wergeland. At the bottom of one of the very first, perfectly white pages of the original, English edition were the words: ‘For Jonas W.’ That was all: ‘For Jonas W.’
It took him a while to get round to asking her about it, it was almost as if he did not dare. One evening they were sitting by the fire in Kamala’s flat in Russell Square in London, not far from where Virginia Woolf had lived. Neither of them had spoken for some minutes. Then he asked: ‘Why did you do it?’
She had stroked the cross-shaped scar on his forehead with her finger and stared at him, as if surprised that he could not guess. ‘Because it was meeting you, your otherness, that put the idea into my head,’ she said.
Jonas thought about this again and again. What an honour. To have one’s name appear as the first words, as a prelude to, a story which had been printed in millions of copies, a book which would be read by young people sitting on park benches who would turn their faces to the sky every now and again and make sacred vows to themselves. A book which men would buy and quote from at difficult moments, as they knelt before their wives. A book which old folk would read and weep over, because they realised that the insight which this novel had given them and which they had rejoiced over in their youth had been no more than a seed, one which had since sprouted and grown into a mighty tree inside them.
When Jonas got out of prison he became Kamala’s secretary. He took care of the mass of paperwork associated with her books. She would have preferred to give him another title. ‘You’re not my secretary,’ she said, ‘you’re my reader.’ But Jonas insisted on being allowed to call himself a ‘secretary’ – a word which, in its original sense, meant a person entrusted with a secret, a private seal, and that was exactly what he wanted to be.
Jonas often took out The Tree of Love and ran a finger over his name printed on that page, as if he could not believe it was true. When everything was over, all that would be left of him would be this little dedication in a romantic novel. People would always wonder who ‘Jonas W.’ was – some people would even take the trouble to find out. He, Jonas Wergeland, who had held a whole nation in the palm of his hand, who had once ranked second only to the king, would wind up as a footnote, so to speak, in a love story. What a paradox. All his travails with television – only to be remembered because of a book.
The first time Jonas opened The Tree of Love, in prison, and saw those letters on the expanse of white at the very front of the novel, he found it hard to read what they said. The letters seemed to him to be shining, his name seemed to be shining. He sat with the book in his hands and knew that he had made the greatest discovery of his life, a discovery which redefined everything, truly expanded him, made him a new person.
So far I have not understood a thing, he thought. I need to go back to the very beginning.
About the Author
JAN KJÆRSTAD is one of Norway’s most acclaimed writers. His trilogy The Seducer, The Conqueror and The Discoverer (Arcadia) has achieved huge international success and won him the prestigious Nordic Council Prize, Scandinavia’s highest literary honour.
BARBARA J. HAVELAND has translated works by several leading Danish and Norwegian authors incuding Peter Høeg, Linn Ullmann and Leif Davidsen.
Copyright
First published in the United Kingdom in 2009
by Arcadia Books, 15-16 Nassau Street, London, W1W 7AB
This ebook edition first published in 2011
Originally published in Norwegian by H. Aschehoug & Co. in 1999
Translation from the Norwegian © Barbara J. Haveland
All rights reserved
© Jan Kjærstad, 1999
The right of Jan Kjærstad to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly
ISBN 978–1–908129–54–3
Jan Kjærstad
The Seducer
Winner of the Nordic Prize for Literature 2001
Translated from the Norwegian by Barbara J. Haveland
Jonas Wergeland is a successful TV documentary producer and also something of God’s gift to women, with balls of gold, as one newspaper puts it. One day he returns from the World’s Fair in Seville and discovers his wife dead on the living-room floor. What follows is a quest to find the killer but more than that is a playful look at how our hero has arrived at this particular juncture in a life full of twists and turns.
This post-modernist Norwegian novel, an international bestseller and winner of Scandinavia’s top literary award, the Nordic Prize, will have you on the edge of your seat, as Jan Kjærstad weaves his magic wand. Prepare to be seduced.
‘An enormously accomplished and compelling novel by one of Scandinavia’s outstanding contemporary writers. Barbara J. Haveland and Arcadia Books have performed a great service by giving us Kjærstad in English at last’ – Paul Auster
‘An irresistibly playful romp, by turns mischievous, manipulative, intellectual and bluntly sensual… hugely satisfying’ – Ali Smith, Books of the Year, TLS
Price £8.99
ISBN: 19781905147014
Jan Kjærstad
The Conqueror
Translated from the Norwegian by Barbara J. Haveland
In the second volume of the trilogy about Jonas Wergeland, Jan Kjærstad’s narrative enmeshes the reader even more closely not only in the life of one man, but also in that of an entire nation and its culture in the latter half of the twentieth century.
Jonas Wergeland has been convicted of the murder of his wife Margrete. What brought Norway’s darling to this end? A professor has been set the task of writing the biography of the once celebrated, now notorious, television personality; in doing so he hopes to solve the riddle of Jonas Wergeland’s success and downfall. But the sheer volume of material on his subject is so daunting that the pr
ofessor finds himself completely bogged down, at a loss as to how to proceed, until the evening when a mysterious stranger knocks on his door, and offers to tell him stories which will help him unravel the strands of Wergeland’s life.
‘Go on, try something different – this brick of a book is witty, savage, elegant and strange – and comes from Norway’s leading writer’ – The Times
‘One of the most important novels you’ll read this year’ – Sunday Herald
Price £8.99
ISBN: 9781905147380
The Discoverer Page 67