“How impossible it was to grasp that in the end something as fine as this could be ground into dust” (p. 213).  I Curse the River of Time, the new novel from the winner of the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award for Out Stealing Horses, is a mesmerizingly beautiful book about love, regret, family secrets and failed revolution.  The novel takes us through thirty-seven-year-old Arvid’s life and its descent towards a moment of terrible crisis. It traces his parents’ hesitant support when he gives up his place at college to work in a paper mill, like his father; his experiences as a fervent young Maoist in Norway in the 1960s; the death of his younger brother; the passionate, enveloping romance that led to marriage and children and, for a time, happiness; the failure of that relationship, and its transformation into a source of harrowing pain.
