The Pastor

A major work of contemporary fiction from Norway by a National Book Award-nominated author, translated by a PEN Translation Prize-winner.

Liv is fascinated by words and their edges and echoes. As a student of theology in Germany, she researches how the language of the Bible was wielded against the indigenous Sami people of northern Scandinavia during the 1800s. Liv excavates their past and her own, searching for meaning in a scene of Sami children gathering cloudberries and figs, from the memory of the magical weaver woman from an Astrid Lindgren fairytale she read as a child, or in how misstep and misunderstandings can lead to isolation and pain.

After the death of a dear friend - a puppeteer with bright eyes hiding her inner turbulence - Liv leaves Germany to become a pastor in a small town in the far north of Norway. Driving through the pine forests of Finland, Liv arrives at the village of her new parish. An introvert, Liv struggles with her many roles: counselor, leader, confidant, friend. Searching for the right words to describe home, she delivers a meandering sermon that sends many of her congregation to sleep (or to the door).

Soon she is drawn into the lives of the villagers: She must find a way to comfort the parents of an adolescent who takes her own life. With each new experience and confrontation, fresh questions about scripture and empathy and who she is arise. She wonders how language, in all its plasticity, became so stiff and unbending, and slowly, she bends it back toward her, building her own vocabulary of healing.