I Curse the River of Time

It is 1989 and all over Europe Communism is crumbling.

Arvid Jansen, 37, is in the throes of a divorce. At the same time, his mother is diagnosed with cancer.

Over a few intense autumn days, we follow Arvid as he struggles to find a new footing in his life, while all the established patterns around him are changing at staggering speed.

As he attempts to negotiate the present, he casts his mind back to holidays on the beach with his brothers, to courtship, and to his early working life, when as a young Communist he abandoned his studies to work on a production line.

I Curse the River of Time is an honest, heartbreaking yet humorous portrayal of a complicated mother-son relationship told in Petterson's precise and beautiful prose.