Writing Passages discusses Per Petterson’s novel “Out Stealing Horses”

“Writing Passages,” a discussion group for book lovers, meets at 7 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 6, at Clemens Library, College of Saint Benedict.

The group discusses Per Petterson’s novel, “Out Stealing Horses.”

The discussion will be led by three professors who admire the book – Tony Cunningham, professor and chair of the philosophy department at the College of Saint Benedict and Saint John’s University; S. Mara Faulkner, OSB, associate professor of English at CSB and SJU; and Ernie Diedrich, professor of economics and social science division head at CSB and SJU.

Called a “gripping account of such originality as to expand the reader’s own experience of life” by Thomas McGuane in the New York Times Sunday Book Review, “Out Stealing Horses” won the 2006 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize and the 2007 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, the world’s largest literary prize for a single work of fiction published in English, worth $133,000.

“Out Stealing Horses” follows a 67-year-old man who is forced to remember the traumatic events of his childhood. His life was changed forever in the summer of 1948, when he was 15. Through his memories, the novel brings that distant summer to life and explores how the recovered past disturbs the present, according to a review of the book by the Guardian Unlimited Web site.

Petterson, born in Oslo, Norway, in 1952, is a trained librarian. He has worked as a bookstore clerk, translator and literary critic before becoming a full-time writer. His other novels include “In the Wake” and “To Siberia.”

Christmas cookies and hot apple cider will be served at the event. While anyone is welcome to attend, participants are encouraged to read the book to get more out of the discussion.

The event is sponsored by the Literary Arts Institute (LAI) at CSB and the CSB/SJU philosophy department.  The LAI was founded in 1997 to foster creative writing, publishing and interaction between students and writers.