The Burnt-Out Town of Miracles

by Roy Jacobsen

Translated from the original Norwegian by Don Bartlett and Don Shaw

1939. A winter in Finland so deadly people called it the white hell.

The inhabitants of a small town burn their cherished homes and, with them, their history, as they flee invading Russian troops. But one man refuses to leave: a simple woodsman with an extraordinary instinct for survival.

Set against a landscape of light and darkness, blazing fires and life-robbing cold, The Burnt-Out Town of Miracles is a tale of cowards and unexpected heroes, of powerful friendships, lives bound together by war, where nothing matters more than finding the path back home.

(From Publisher).

Roy Jacobsen is one of the most celebrated and influential contemporary writers in Norway, with his ten novels, four collections of short stories, a biography and a children’s book. Among other awards, Roy Jacobsen has won Norway’s Booksellers’ Prize, Critic’s Prize and, in 2006, the Gyldendal Prize for the Burnt-Out Town of Miracles.

It is a story about war and friendship in a cold waste area in Finland in 1939. Beautifully written!