A family story of epic scale, by the author of NORWEGIAN WOOD and THE BELL IN THE LAKE.
Mytting's book is as much a romantic historical thriller as it is a book of promise, a page-turner as it is a reflective journey into selfhood, history, life's meaning and individual moral responsibility
Mytting follows up
Norwegian Wood with a mystery that fits together like a piece of fine marquetry
The Sixteen Trees of the Somme is so cleverly plotted, and it builds up such effortless dramatic momentum as it zeroes in on its conclusion
The tug of this book on the heart and mind is irresistible . . . And you will, I think, struggle to find a modern novel in which the emotional, imaginative lure of trees and wood is as powerful.
Though the twists of discovery drive the plot, it is the intimacy with the natural world - as we might expect from the author of the phenomenally successful
Norwegian Wood - that most compels us: potato-flowers, islets, storm petrels, walnut trees and walnut wood.
Mytting's novel has it all: the propulsive narrative, the human interest, the deep historical context, the gorgeously detailed descriptions of the finer things in life
Lars Mytting, a novelist and journalist, was born in Fåvang, Norway, in 1968. His novel The Sixteen Trees of the Somme) was awarded the Norwegian National Booksellers' Award and has been bought for film. Norwegian Wood has become an international bestseller, and was the Bookseller Industry Awards Non-Fiction Book of the Year 2016. His novel The Bell in the Lake was a number one bestseller in Norway and nominated for the Norwegian National Bookseller's Award 2018.