Novel
Moment of Freedom
Frihetens øyeblikk
Jens Bjørneboe · 1966
Synopsis
The narrator, who seems to have forgotten his name, is “servant of justice” at the court of Heiligenberg, a small principality in the Alps: he brushes the judge's robes, fills the inkwells, carries messages, and sees injustice pass for law every day. In secret, he fills his notebooks with the account of everything men have inflicted on one another. This work sends him back to his own past, from exile in Sweden during the war to his years of wandering, and to the question of what went wrong with men.
Context
The novel was published in 1966 by Gyldendal and opens a trilogy, the Histoire de la bestialité, continued by Kruttårnet in 1969 and Stillheten in 1973, which, according to Britannica, traces the growing violence of the state against the weak. Esther Greenleaf Mürer translated it into English for W. W. Norton in 1975, a translation reissued by Norvik Press in 2017. Charles Aubry produced the French version at Plein Chant in 1994, under the title L'Instant de la liberté : le manuscrit d'Heiligenberg.
Who it is for
Translated into French and English; a book that accumulates more than it narrates, the first part of a trilogy but readable on its own.
Prizes and reception
“Probably his best novel” according to Britannica, which counts the author among the leading writers of post-war Norway.
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