Little Horse

Thorvald Steen is a Norwegian writer who has published a wide range of novels, plays, collections of poems, short stories, children’s books, and essays. His novel Lionheart is also published by Seagull Books. James Anderson's literary translations from the Norwegian include Berlin Poplars, by Anne B. Ragde; Nutmeg, by Kristin Valla; and several books by Jostein Gaarder.

“The structure provides clarity and directness, which Steen slowly unravels by traveling through Snorre’s memories and into the path of the lives intersecting his, of those who loved him, who hated him, and who killed him. The Little Horse shows just how much richness there is in dramatic irony. . . . Steen doesn’t abandon the ripe entertainment in a story of love, fatherhood, spies, betrayals, manipulation, revenge, and assassins attacking a man who has secret tunnels on his property and a son who kills on his orders in eleventh-century Iceland. It is a saga itself and Anderson’s translation accomplishes the difficult task of creating not just the descriptions of a historical time, but prose that has the stiffness of an older world, while still tumbling gently, never forgetting that Iceland is a land of beauty.”

• The Little Horse Afterword References