Author Bjorneboe's Book
Reviews
Moment of Freedom
The narrator is a courthouse in an Alpine principality, who in his spare time is writing a "History of Bestiality." The discovery of pornographic photos involving leading citizens of the town sets him to trying to remember his past, including rebellious school days, wanderings in Germany and Italy and his time as a refugee and art student in Stockholm during World WAr II. He ruminates on the nature of evil and his own cowardice in not having the courage...
Powderhouse
POWDERHOUSE is the second volume in the "History of Bestiality" trilogy by the Norwegian writer Jens Bjorneboe. It is set in a surrealistic mental hospital in Alsace. A bizarre cast of doctors and patients are woven around a series of therapeutic lectures on such topics as the permanent witch hunt, capital punishment, and the role of the heretic in history. By turns gruesome, lyrical and funny, this explosive book bursts the bounds of genre....
The Sharks
Describes the voyage of the bark Neptune across the pacific in 1899. The ship is a microcosm of the world. Conflicts erupt at the very beginning. As the ship's medical officer, the narrator/second mate feels himself caught in the middle. Tension builds up to a mutiny, but a typhoon forces all to cooperate to save themselves. ...
The Silence
In the third volume of the "History of Bestiality" Trilogy, the narrator is sojourning in an unnamed country in North Africa. The narrator's alcoholism becomes a metaphor for European wealth-addiction and its effect on the rest of the world, and the inevitablilty of revolution. The narrator talks with a black African revolutionary and an American Vietnam veteran, and steps out of time and has conversations with Columbus, Robespierre, and God. ...
