PositiveBook PostFirmly and persuasively, she shows that the barbarians included people of great cultural and personal refinement, and reveals the extent to which the Dark Ages were lit by the shimmering gold mosaics on Ravenna’s walls. Capital of Empire and Crucible of Europe are ambitious titles to bestow on any city, but every reader of this engrossing book will feel in the end that Ravenna deserves them.
Vigdis Hjorth, trans. by Charlotte Barslund
PositiveThe New York Review of Books... expertly translated into idiomatic British English by Charlotte Barslund, who perfectly captures Hjorth’s shifting subtleties of tone, an essential aspect of novels that have been crafted with the same painstaking care as an embroidery. And as with embroidery, every thread of Ellinor’s tale loops its patterned way through the fabric of the story before its loose end is neatly, unobtrusively tucked away ... The contrast between simplicity and sophistication becomes a recurrent theme in Long Live the Post Horn! ... In this constant measuring of one person against another, the mail service emerges as one of the most powerful bonds connecting Norwegian to Norwegian, no matter how harshly changing times, changing politics, and changing technology conspire to divide them from one another.
