Jan Kjærstad
The Path of Kins

The Path of Kins
The Path of Kins is a novel with a large cast of characters. Among them we meet Albert Bohre who on a kayaking trip in his childhood is frightened almost to death by a humpback whale and who as an adult becomes one of the world’s greatest and most bloodthirsty whaling magnates. In 1956 he attends the Olympics in Melbourne and sees Egil Danielsen win the gold medal for Norway. Something about the world-record throw, the sight of the javelin soaring through the air, causes him to re-evaluate everything.

The Path of Kins is perhaps above all a story about robust women, about a century during which women improved their living conditions and grasped opportunities in a radically new fashion. Rita Bohre’s life’s work is called Femina erecta and is about how women must stand tall. At the same time, it is a taking to task of the male reptilian mindset.

Jan Kjærstad

Jan Kjærstad occupies a prominent place in contemporary Norwegian literature. He has a master‘s degree in theology from the University of Oslo, and he made his debut as a writer of fiction in 1980 with Kloden dreier stille rundt, a collection of short stories. He has written a number of novels and short stories and he has published picture books and essays. In 1984 he received the Norwegian Literary Critics Association’s Prize for Homo Falsus, or the Perfect Murder. The fact that he was honored with Germany’s prestigious Henrik Steffens Prize in 1998, awarded to Scandinavians who have significantly enriched Europe’s artistic and intellectual life, also illustrates his international appeal as an author. His trilogy The Seducer (1993), The Conquerer (1996) and The Inventer (1999) makes a monumental contribution towards renewal of the art of novel writing in Scandinavia.