A dark and brilliant novel on Edgar Allen Poe; Frobenius juxtaposes factual, historical material with pure invention.
On a summer´s day in 1841, the author Edgar Allan Poe and the editor Rufus Griswold meet at a Philadelphia hotel.Both are ambitious, cutting-edge figures on America´s young literary scene. Their relationship develops quickly into something more substantial than the contrasts between them might have seemed to promise – and certainly much more than they themselves expected. Attraction, envy, and contempt tug them back and forth in a game that increasingly looks like a case of professional and personal possession.
Meanwhile a little man, pale as a corpse, trails them through the streets of America´s East Coast cities, trailing a vapour of blood and fear.
Frobenius demonstrates once again he is at the top of the rankings of Norwegian authors. Depicting Edgar Allan Poe’s life with the effects of the author’s own literature is elegantly executed. What makes this novel more than a successful style study is this battle of poetry, a struggle that includes aesthetics, ethics, lust, jealousy, ambition and dreams.
NRK
