The Ravens
Description
The fields at Raven Fen yield barely enough for Agne and his family to live on, and his young son Klas can only watch as despair consumes his father. While Klas dreams of migrating birds - of escape - Agne imagines his crops devoured by insects never seen in Sweden, predicts endless cycles of storm and drought, hears only the ceaseless crowing of the ravens - and obsesses over the day when his son will take on his burden of toil.
But it is Sweden, it is the 1970s, and Klas can't accept the life his father has chosen for him. Caught between loyalty to his father and fear of his apparent destiny, Klas takes solace in nature, with the cuckoos, curlews and lapwings, far from the tormented world of Raven Fen. And as his father, like his father before him, falls deeper into madness, Klas begins to wonder if he himself might be insane.
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Tomas Bannerhed grew up on a farm in southern Sweden but has lived in Stockholm since the 1990s. He has been a university lecturer and editor, and spent two years on the highly-respected creative writing course, Nordens Författarskola. The Ravens is his first book.
In 2011, The Ravens won the prestigious August Prize in the Best Swedish Fiction Book category. It also won Sweden's major prize for first novels and Stora Läsarpriset, a prize awarded by an online book-group community, its winner selected by readers. The Ravens has been translated into a number of languages including German, French and Dutch, and is to be made into a film.
