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Overview
In his spellbinding first novel, acclaimed Icelandic author Olaf Olafsson takes us inside the mind of a man haunted by the crime he willed half a century earlier.Expatriate businessman Peter Peterson left behind the trappings of a seemingly charmed life: a vast fortune, two children, and a stately Park Avenue address. But he also left behind another legacy: a secret from long ago that shadowed his accomplishments and estranged him from his loved ones—a crime of passion, committed in the throes of unrequited love, that became a lifetime’s burden. Yet when Peter is forced to confront the consequences of his actions, an unexpected turn of events shakes the very foundation of his past. Spanning a boyhood in Iceland to the Nazi occupation of Denmark to modern-day Manhattan, Absolution calls up Dostoevsky and Ibsen as it masterfully plumbs the darkest corners of a sinister mind and a wounded heart.
Editorials
Publishers Weekly -
A popular writer in Iceland, Olafsson makes his English language debut in this sensitive, resonant, if imperfect, study of guilt, jealousy and betrayal. Peter Peterson, an Icelandic emigre and wealthy retired New York businessman, obsesses over a crime of passion he committed half a century before in Nazi-occupied Denmark. Spurned by a young Icelandic woman, he falsely accused her boyfriend of betraying the resistance movement to the Nazis. Now the aged Peterson is a cynical, fulminating recluse, his only companion a refugee Cambodian housemaid whom he clumsily attempts to seduce. Through flashbacks and reminiscences, we learn of his two failed marriages, his refusal to visit his ex-wife on her deathbed, his obsession with money and cruel contempt for his devoted son Helgi. Originally published in Iceland in 1991, this novel suffers from a protagonist who is so dislikable that one tends to lose interest in his melancholy, evasive monologue. Olafsson, president of Sony Electronic Publishing in New York, lamely frames the main narrative with commentary by a compatriot who is asked to translate the manuscript on Peterson's death and ends up identifying with him. A surprise ending puts Peterson's guilty self-recrimination in an ironic light. (Mar.)Library Journal
From Iceland comes a contemporary novel presented as the memoirs of an expatriate living in New York. Though wine connossieur Peter Peterson has achieved financial success, he looks back on his selfish, egotistical, and manipulative life with a combination of vanity, defensiveness, paranoia, and self-deception. As a student in Denmark, he responds brutally to the pangs of unrequited love; for the rest of his life, he is haunted by his crime of passion, despite a new life in the New World. Though Peterson claims he does not seek forgiveness, the revelations in this first-person narrative are those of a guilt-ridden man yearning for understanding and vindication. A best-selling author in Iceland, Olafsson deserves wide attention in this country as well. Recommended.-- Ann Irvine, Montgomery Cty. P.L., Ct .Book Details
Published
February 1, 1994
Publisher
New York : Pantheon Books, [1994], c1991.
Pages
272
Format
Hardcover
ISBN
9780679428916