Pferde stehlen

Geschrieben von Per Petterson

Erzählt von Walter Kreye

Norwegen im Sommer 1948: Der fünfzehnjährige Trond verbringt die Ferien in einer Hütte nahe der schwedischen Grenze. Es ist eine Gegend, in der man Pferde stehlen kann, zum Beispiel mit dem gleichaltrigen Jon von nebenan. Abseits vom Dorf, am großen Fluß, kommt Trond dem in den Jahren des Krieges entbehrten Vater wieder näher. Als in der Nachbarsfamilie ein schreckliches Unglück geschieht, entdeckt der Junge das wohlgehütete Lebensgeheimnis seines Vaters. In den Kriegsjahren hatte dieser zusammen mit der Nachbarin politisch Verfolgte über den Fluß gebracht. Und sich dabei für immer in diese Frau verliebt. Noch ahnt der Sohn nicht, daß er seinen Vater nach diesem gemeinsamen Sommer nie wiedersehen wird. Fünfzig Jahre später hat sich Trond eine ähnliche Hütte an einem Fluß im Norden gekauft. Nach dem Tod seiner Frau will er hier, allein mit seinem Hund, seinen Lebensabend verbringen. Bis ein Nachbar auftaucht, der ihm bekannt vorkommt, und die Ereignisse jenes Sommers ihn wieder einholen.

• Sprache: Deutsch
• Herausgeber: Hörbuch Hamburg Audio
• Erscheinungsdatum: 21. März 2014
• ISBN: 9783844910162

Per Petterson

Per Petterson is the author of five previous novels, which established him as one of Norway's best fiction writers. Petterson worked as a manual laborer, spent twelve years as a bookseller, and was a translator and literary critic before becoming a full-time writer. His novel Out Stealing Horses won the 2007 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, and was named one of the best books of 2007 by the New York Times Book Review and Time.

Rezensionen für Pferde stehlen

[bblum_10 · Bewertung: 4 von 5 Sternen]

At age 67 Trond moves to a remote village far in the east of Norway. A walk in the first snow with his dog Lyra brings back a jumble of memories from his youth, a summer in a similar village spent with his father shortly after the war and the discoveries made about the war, his father, neighbors and felling logs. A profound read, intense but not boring or trivial, but revelatory about growing older and memories.

[clarerhoden · Bewertung: 4 von 5 Sternen]

Very interesting, and quite evocative of the Scandinavian atmosphere, which was great. However I found that I didn't like Trond very much, as he seems unable to form ongoing relationships. He's so self-contained. It's hard to get close to him, in my opinion. There were also some nasty images in the story (eg Jon smashing the egg and nest), and Trond seemed so passive in his responses, which didn't really help me to get to like him. (I like his daughter much more.)
The little mantra he learned from his father ('we get to choose how much something hurts us' is the gist) suffers a little from being so unqualified. I can see that Trond internalised this idea, and that he's closed himself up so that he doesn't have to hurt. In the long run, though, such sayings are very limited as life guides because they don't lend themselves to qualification - to if and but and when - or to intensification - some victims/sufferers actually don't get to choose how much pain they will feel. (the fact that my mother is dying from a brain tumour may be colouring my responses here, just so you know; you might feel very differently about it.)
A smallish quibble over a very interesting, well-written book.

[mejix · Bewertung: 5 von 5 Sternen]

es un libro hermoso. es un libro sobre lo que significa la ausencia del padre. funciona a un nivel casi arquetipico. un final cruel pero conceptualmente coherente: el hijo recibe una cantidad reducida de dinero, se casa con la madre. la voz de muchacho tiene rareza. no se como explicarlo.casi como subconciente. el libro tiene una cualidad rara que no se como explicar. es como si cambiara de forma. cuando uno cree que el libro se trata de una cosa en realidad se trata de otra. es una cualidad rarisima. sugiere formlessness sin serlo. sugiere mutabilidad. me parece super apropiada para un libro sobre la ausencia del padre.

[annikabirgitta · Bewertung: 3 von 5 Sternen]

I had a hard time getting into this book. I wished I had read it in Swedish instead as I sometimes relate to the characters better in my native language.

[lindaspangler · Bewertung: 5 von 5 Sternen]

a wonderfully written book, full of the inner life of an aging man, living in the wilderness in Norway, reminiscing about his life, including what happened during the war.

[joecanas_1 · Bewertung: 5 von 5 Sternen]

A solid 5-star, well-written book -- one I hope to read again in coming years with the same (or different!) sense of awe. I am a long-time fan of Per Petterson's works, and I've saved this one -- clearly his masterpiece judging by the jacket reviews -- for a couple of years while enjoying and checking off his "lesser" novels.I brought Out Stealing Horses to Norway on vacation -- a perfect book for cafe reading in Oslo, I thought. But it began slowly, proceeded slowly, and I brought it back home having very unenthusiastically finished just the first two chapters in fits and starts. Uh-oh, classic signs of an agonizing slog ahead! Oslo itself plays a small but important role in the novel, so maybe that's why it was impossible for me to get into the book while there?Several days after returning home from vacation, I started over, free of urban Norwegian distractions, and I fell into Petterson's storytelling rhythm. The book rarely picks up the pace -- it's a slow-burn story, meandering ponies instead of galloping thoroughbreds. If you don't care for that sort of thing, keep browsing. But once I got past the first 30 pages, I found the turns of phrase, the protagonist's a-ha observations, the various heartbreaking, life-shattering moments and the sad/beautiful conclusion all effective and entertaining despite (because of?) the glacial pacing. In fact, quite a lot happens over the course of 238 pages -- but just a few key moments play out quickly (thrillingly! breathlessly!), the way out-of-control events can overwhelm us, shaking us out of the comfort zone of an otherwise ordinary life. When those moments arrived in the story, I was riveted.There are many worthy plot summaries elsewhere; I will toss out a few themes as a nod to the amateur reviewer's time-honored practice of helpfully boiling down complex works to just a few bullet points. - It's a coming-of-age story: Trond, the 67-year-old central character, reviews his life, mainly returning to the summer he was 15. The events of that year defined him -- in ways he still struggles to understand decades later.- It's a Norway story: Winter is coming (!) and a lack of preparation equals suffering, if not certain death. It's also a lone man's meditation on choosing to live alone in a remote area. But the threat of being snowed in -- cut off from civilization, food, and supplies -- is paramount.- It's a World War II story: Norway's occupation during World War II is not the main theme or time period of the novel, but the characters' fates are absolutely affected by events and choices made during and immediately after the war. - It's full of surprising appearances and disappearances. There are not a lot of characters in the book. But a fair number of friends, neighbors and family members die or leave -- or arrive -- when least expected.- Yes, there are horses -- the same two horses, it turns out, at the beginning and the end of the novel. But a lot happens in between the two rides, thanks to artfully deployed flashbacks.- Out stealing horses: "You keep using that phrase. I do not think it means what you think it means." (In fact, nearly all the words mean something else, since I read the original Norwegian novel in an English translation.)As with any rich work, this one is actually about pain and suffering. It is also about choices, and whether we truly make them or have them thrust upon us by others. Trond, the narrator, recalls a time in childhood when his father assigned him the task of picking thistles out of their yard. He complied, but stopped well before finishing the job because it hurt so much without gloves. His father reached out bare-handed and grabbed bunches of thistles without showing any sign of discomfort. After a while, he leaned over and gave his son what was clearly intended as valuable advice: "You decide when it hurts."

[jamaicanmecrazy · Bewertung: 4 von 5 Sternen]

Wow--such conflicting feelings after reading this little gem. Read it in 3 sittings, with the last 1/2 of the book the final sitting. Could hardly put it down I was so invested in what happened between Tron and his father. I don't want to give anything away, but there was a lot of meaning packed in 238 pages, and yes we do decide when it hurts.

[candacefb · Bewertung: 5 von 5 Sternen]

A wonderful quiet book.

[jimsnopes · Bewertung: 5 von 5 Sternen]

A superb read for someone who has been a son and now has a son himself. Or for anyone else, probably, if you like a high standard of writing without being high-flown or "abstruse". So well written that visualization of the landscape and the protagonists' place in it is so easy and enriching of the plot. One of my favourite books of all time, second only to the complete works of William Faulkner.An interview with Per Petterson on this book is due to be broadcast on the BBC World Service on June 7 2014. It may include a question from me along the lines of: "I read the book when I was 67, the same age as the narrator. Reading some of the sentences affected my breathing (in a good way) so much that I had to stop for a while. The only other time I can recall this happening is sometimes when I'm reading Faulkner. Does this ever happen to you either when you've just written a particular sentence or paragraph of your own or when you have been reading any particular writer?"

[janeajones · Bewertung: 5 von 5 Sternen]

At 67, three years after the deaths of his wife and sister, Trond Sander has retreated to a small house on a river in the sparsely populated far east of Norway. He has determined to live alone with only his dog Lyra as a companion.All my life I have longed to be alone in a place like this. Even when everything was going well, as if often did. I have been lucky....I could suddenly get a longing to be in a place where there was only silence.He has not completely cut himself off from civilization; he goes into the nearby town for supplies and he has a car and a radio, though he chooses to eschew television and is ambivalent about hooking up to the telephone service. He spends his days getting the place in order, fishing, and walking his dog until one night his peace is disturbed by a neighbor whistling for his straying dog, and he goes out to assist him. He recognizes the neighbor as someone from his distant past, and the recognition sets into motion the opening up of his memory-hoard, and we encounter a man reaching for his adolescence, his experience during the Nazi occupation, his parents, and an old friendship.The novel unfolds as a series of revelations, some shocking, some subtle -- it has the quality of a investigative mystery, but a highly lyrical and beautifully written one. It is also a meditation on the rites of passage of adolescence and of aging. As in much Scandinavian writing, a focus on the struggle to live within nature, always tending carefully to one's tools, is central to the gestalt of the book.Only a few loose ends took a half star off my perfect rating. Highly recommended.

[alisony-1 · Bewertung: 4 von 5 Sternen]

I think this is a book that deserves to be savoured rather than dipping in and out of it over too long a period like I did. I enjoyed the beautiful writing and the slow, quiet pace of the book which would normally tick all my 'book love' boxes, but somehow it didn't grab me as much as it seems to have grabbed everyone else.I definitely think this is partly attributable to reading it during a particularly busy and distracted few weeks. Days elapsed in between snatched readings, and I think I lost something from my reading experience as a result.Essentially this is a tale of a man in his 60s who has taken himself off to a cabin in a semi-remote part of Norway to live out the rest of his days in peace and simplicity away from the emotional pressures of family and life in general. His nearest neighbour turns out to randomly be an acquaintance from his childhood, which stirs up many long stored away memories, some idyllic, others difficult.I enjoyed the chapters returning to his childhood, but felt that a few potentially gripping story threads fell a little flat in the end. I appreciate that the author was deliberately wanting to leave some loose ends, but it felt a little like getting engrossed in a newspaper article only to find the concluding page is missing.There were interesting emotions and feelings at play, but these were written in a male Men-Are-From-Mars-don't-dwell-on-your-emotions-too-much kind of way, and as a result I didn't empathise with the main protagonist as much as I could have done.4 stars - worth a read, but by the end of the year I feel I'll have forgotten much about it.

[paakre-1 · Bewertung: 5 von 5 Sternen]

Beautifully written story about: 1/ a boy and his father in Norway right after the second World War 2/contemporary loneliness and remembrance of his childhood friend's tragedy brought out by moving to a house in the country 3/mystery of what the boy's father was actually doing when he was moving all of the lumber down river...and all three threads come together in a natural, accessible way.

[paulagraph · Bewertung: 4 von 5 Sternen]

I enjoyed this novel more than expected after reading Ceridwen's negative review. The British idiomatic translation didn't bother me. In fact, it seems more in keeping with the Norwegian postwar setting than American English might be. I do admit to having been taken aback when Trond's father says, "Blow me," when his 15 year old son comes into their cabin soaking wet after having been out early in the AM caught in a storm. Overall the spareness of the prose matches both the physical and emotional landscape of the novel. Since I read this novel as vacation reading over a two week period, it entered my consciousness in fragments, which perhaps did not do it justice. However, it seems fitting that I read parts of this novel set in rural Norway while staying at a resort on Washington Island in Wisconsin run by a Norwegian family since 1902.
"Out stealing horses" refers to the early AM excursion mentioned above during which Trond & his friend Jon ride a neighbor's horses without authorization. Trond arrives home wet and dirty because his horse throws him & because a fierce storm starts up. "Out stealing horses" also refers to the code words Trond's father used when passing information across the border into Sweden for the Resistance while Norway was occupied by Germany during WWII.
My one criticism of the novel is that I don't quite believe the ending of the story. Perhaps because the first person narration so severely limits our knowledge of the adult characters whom Trond remembers in the flashback chapters. (I found the two-time-frame, back-and-forth form clunky at times) This is particularly true of Trond's parents. The result is that Trond's father's decision to leave his family and, apparently, go off with Jon & Lars's mother (whom he worked with in the Resistance) is only partially supported by what we know of him. What we do know makes the fact that he never again contacts his first family nor support them (other than giving them the 150 kroner from cutting the timber--enough to buy Trond a new suit)a strange and not quite credible turn of events.

[cat1ballou · Bewertung: 4 von 5 Sternen]

This is kind of tricky to rate. I really thought, up until the last, oh, maybe, third, that I would finish the book, be relatively unimpressed, and sell it to the used books department. But then that last third happened and totally changed my mind about the entire work, even though I still don't think the first part is all that fantastic. So I guess the upshot of all of this is that if you make it through the first two-thirds, your mind might just be blown by what you encounter in the conclusion.

[aylin1-1 · Bewertung: 5 von 5 Sternen]

What a great book! Low key story of an older man's life told via flashbacks of memory which are triggered after meeting a neighbor from a transformative year of his life as a youth. Takes place in Norway circa WWII. Beautiful and simple imagery.

[dmarsh451 · Bewertung: 5 von 5 Sternen]

We have had a death in the family which has meant stopping almost everything to pay my respects to Death and Time. I don't know how long they'll be right in the house like this. Maybe until the Peak Freans run out, or until some illuminating memory shakes out of the vault to make sense of the whole; a snow globe marked 'Souvenir of Life on Earth', the light hidden in those falling fake metallic flakes. I do know that whatever it is, Death and TIme will return to their place on the back burner to be taken for granted again like breath itself. So what do you read when the geese are flying over, the leaves are turning, and Time is cleaning your mirrors? I happened to be reading 'the Norwegian book about the father and son'. And I couldn't have been reading a more perfect book for this time. Perhaps that's the recommendation right there; that this book could stand up to this time. It did not become too frivolous so that I had to set it aside, nor was it too complicated or difficult. It had no trickery and very little ego. The truths in this book are stated as sparely and simply as one of Sibelius' piano works, each piece of time whole in itself and then set down in just the right spot until it makes sense to the adult son and the reader. What the son finds out is that there is more than one order for time. There is the order in which it was lived, the order it is remembered (which is often on shuffle), and the special order that is like a puzzle. Work it, and it gives you the big picture, or at least the forest for the trees. Like the characters, the woods have a strong, resinous presence in this book."...and the wet boggy moss and the sweet, sharp, all-pervading odour of something greater than ourselves and beyond our comprehension; of the forest, which just went on and on to the north and into Sweden and over to Finland and further on the whole way to Siberia, and you could get lost in this forest and a hundred people go searching for weeks without a chance of finding you, and why should that be so bad, I wondered, to get lost here? But I did not know then how serious that thought was." I know those woods. They go to the tree-line and as spare as this book is, he leaves nothing out. There is some logging in this book, Stihl portraits that never get overwrought or silly. He really leaves nothing out.My high opinion of this book may be due to the time I read it, but I don't think so.

[mldavis2 · Bewertung: 4 von 5 Sternen]

A translation from Norwegian, this novel is a award winner from several reputable sources. Petterson's prose begins simply and turns to stream-of-thought run-on sentences that are reminiscent of some of the dialog of Garrison Keillor - thoughts spoken as they come to mind. The protagonist is a man whose thoughts span decades of his own life experience and come to bear heavily on his memory of specific incidents with his father and mother and friend. I found this a very enjoyable read.

[maryreinert · Bewertung: 3 von 5 Sternen]

The writing is this book is beautiful. I could feel the cold when reading. And, the premise of the story -- a man attempting to escape his past but events just will not let them, is a good one. However, after a while, I just felt like I was missing something. The time sequence of the novel moves from present to past and back again and at times I had difficulty making those moves. This is definitely a study in characterization, not plot. I agree with those that praised the writing style, and agreed with those that felt it left them somehow unfulfilled.

[steve38 · Bewertung: 4 von 5 Sternen]

I chose this as a holiday read for a trip to Norway. It was a good choice. A novel reflecting a childhood both idyllic and troubled that lead to a contemplative and deliberatly isolated old age. Written in an uncomplicated style that reminded me of Robert Pirsig with just as much depth and just as many pathways hinted at and left for you to thoughtfully follow. One book can't tell me all about Norway but I certainly felt I'd learnt something of Norwegian culture and life when I reached the end.

[josephj_530382 · Bewertung: 4 von 5 Sternen]

A story about a fifteen year old becoming a man when he experiences some events that he does not fully understand at the time. Also about a 67 year old man who removes himself from his old life (both psychologically and in regard to location) as falls deeper into the recollection of one fateful summer when he was that 15 year old boy "growing up".

[vancouverdeb · Bewertung: 4 von 5 Sternen]

I thoroughly enjoyed Out Stealing Horses. It's the Norwegian based story of a teenaged boy,Trond, living with his father for a summer in a small cabin in a remote area. His father has had difficulty adapting to family and village life after serving in WW11, and so has left son Trond's mother and sister behind in the family's village home. A tragedy takes place during that ill-fated summer, forever changing both Trond and his family , as well as the directly affected family . Both families fall apart in the aftermath. Many years later, the young man, Trond, is now 67 and has lost his second wife to a car accident. Trond decides to live out his final years in small isolated cabin, much like the cabin that he spent with his father during a summer many years ago. A chance encounter with a neighbour brings back memories of that tragic summer many years ago. Trond more or less re-lives his that summer, from the point of view of someone aged 67, rather than 15, and we as readers come to realize that much more went on that summer than Trond understood when he was a young boy.That said, there is a fair amount of symbolism and unanswered questions for me. Perhaps some questions are intentionally left unanswered, or for us as readers to fill in as we understand life.For this book, this is a very long piece of direct insight on Trond's part, but I'll quote it here ,page 73 Trond, our narrator, thinks to himself:" People like it when you tell them things, in suitable portions, in a modest , intimate tone, and they think they know you, but they do not, they know about you, for what they are let in on are facts, not feelings, not what your opinion is about anything at all, not how what has happened to you and how all the decisions you have turned you into who you are. What they do is they fill in with their own feelings and opinions and assumptions, and they compose a new life which has precious little to do with yours, and that let's you off the hook. No - one can touch you unless you yourself want them too."Perhaps that is why while I understand much of Trond's life much better as he retells it as an adult, I am also left with questions. Perhaps the author planned it that way. A brilliant,nuanced, moving but understated book. 4 stars.

[rosies_38 · Bewertung: 5 von 5 Sternen]

This book really grew on me. Thanks Per.

[presto_1 · Bewertung: 4 von 5 Sternen]

Now at the age of 67, and looking forward to the relative isolation of his new life, Trond has just taken up residence in a remote cottage needing more than a little renovation.. Has he settles in he looks back to 1948, the year that he was 15. That was the year he went stealing horses with his friend Jon, it was also the year of more than one tragedy.Trond tells his story, jumping from the present to 1948 as daily events in his life remind him of the past. As he does so we gradually piece together the effects 1948 has on both his family and that of Jon's. The result is a beautiful and atmospheric story of reconciling the events of the past and the hope of a new beginning.

[casualfriday_1 · Bewertung: 3 von 5 Sternen]

This slender novel, translated from the Norwegian is one of those slow reads that I generally prefer, but for some reason I failed to appreciate it. It's about an elderly man who has retired to an isolated cabin, only to find himself living next to a neighbor from his boyhood, with whom he shares painful memories. The prose is beautiful, but beautiful in uneven ways: sometimes as plain as Cormac McCarthy in The Road, and sometimes very florid and descriptive. I wonder if the translation has an impact on that; that was the same criticism I had of Orhan Pamuk's Snow (which my book group renamed "Slow.") There is a lot going on here: tragic accidents, wartime heroics, adultery, and logging - don't forget the logging - but the tale is told so quietly, so subtly, that I got a little impatient - it seems I'm in an unsubtle mood for my reading these days.

[ebt1002 · Bewertung: 4 von 5 Sternen]

I had this book sitting on my shelf for a long time and was about to give it away when I read some other LTers' comments about it. I am SO glad I read it! The prose was, well, poetic -- without being pretentious. I tend to look for interesting characters in my reading, but I also respond to exquisite renderings of place. This novel has both. I loved the imagery, the associations, and (with occasional lapses into distracting self-consciousness) the descriptions of Trond's inner world. The novel follows his growing awareness of possibility, of meaning and continuity in his experience, and his sense of place in the world ("...even if it's not possible to recognise water from the way it flows, that was precisely what I did"). Beautiful. The story plays with such paradox throughout, and we witness Trond's maturing mastery of his own experience and acceptance of his ambivalence. He learns from his father that "...we do decide for ourselves when it will hurt." Of course we do. Coming to terms with that is, in this novel, almost breathtaking.

[brasidas_1 · Bewertung: 4 von 5 Sternen]

This is lovely. Very compressed language. Funny how that comes through even in translation (from the Norwegian). At certain points the novel suggests all that is good about Hemingway's "Big Two-Hearted River," which is not to say it's derivative, not at all; just that Petterson knows his Hemingway. The narrative flashes between past and present. A 67 year old man has moved to rural Norway, away from Oslo after the death of his second wife, and settled in a lakeside village. His children, two daughters, are grown. His way of life is stoic, in the purest sense: plain food, water, basic shelter and clothing, and a closeness to nature instilled in him during a summer to the region in 1948. The narrative flashes effortlessly between that glorious coming of age summer and the present day. In some sense the two eras impinge on each other, refract each other, in fascinating ways. It is not a written document we read but rather the very orderly thoughts of a man moved to what he thinks of as his final lodging. He is happy to be back in the natural world after a long spell in Oslo where he raised a family, owned a firm of some kind. The landscape is a big part of the story and it is always beautifully integrated with the action. Nothing seems extraneous. The translation works by way of the comma splice, leaving the period for stronger impact. As Virginia Woolf said somewhere in her essays, I paraphrase, writing is all about rhythm. Well, we certainly get that sense here. The language is sinous and lean and perfectly freighted; that is to say, it seems neither overly nor under burdened by detail. Other comments here have everything you need to know about plot. Highly recommended.

[catalogthis · Bewertung: 5 von 5 Sternen]

Beautifully written, but not flashy. Narrated by man named Trond, who in 1999 has recently moved to an isolated cabin in the middle of nowhere, Norway. As he prepares the cabin for the approaching winter, he reflects on a summer holiday in 1948, which he spent in a similar cabin with his somewhat-mysterious father. A coming-of-age story told by a man just beginning to write the final chapter of his own life.Don't go into this expecting spectacular plot twists, or shocking revelations. This is mostly a meditation on identity and connection. An excerpt:People like it when you tell them things, in suitable portions, in a modest, intimate tone, and they think they know you, but they do not, they know about you, for what they are let in on are facts, not feelings, not what your opinion is about anything at all, not how what has happened to you and how all the decisions you have made have turned you into who you are. What they do is they fill in with their own feelings and opinions and assumptions, and they compose a new life which has precious little to do with yours, and that lets you off the hook. No-one can touch you unless you yourself want them to. Also, includes some oddly satisfying passages about haying and logging and the cutting of grass. Not odd in themselves, but odd in that I enjoyed them so much.

[laura400 · Bewertung: 4 von 5 Sternen]

This is an absolutely wonderful novel. Though written originally in Norwegian, the English translation seems excellent, with the prose elegant and spare. It touches on the mysteries of growing up, the distance and yearning between a boy and his father, between any family members, really, even the legacy of the resistance in Norway.

[papatrick_1 · Bewertung: 4 von 5 Sternen]

An elderly Scandanavian inhabits a cottage in Norway near its border with Sweden, a cottage passed through the family at least since he was a child. Flashbacks occur to a time when he was an adolescent during WW II; his father was revealed to him as both a hero and a betrayer--though he scarcely knew it at the time. The unfolding of plot details is handled well, and the sense of atmosphere and locale stays with the reader.

[stephaniechase_1 · Bewertung: 3 von 5 Sternen]

I found it difficult to "get in" to this book -- it was almost too spare. The disjointed time sequence made it difficult to become absorbed in the tale at hand; not every tale of a man escaping to be alone is a compelling one.