Tag: Martin Aitken

  • The Employees, a workplace novel of the 22nd century by Olga Ravn, reviewed by Titus Chalk

    The Employees, a workplace novel of the 22nd century by Olga Ravn, reviewed by Titus Chalk

    Powerful men like to send things into space. Perhaps the darkness between the stars is the proximity to godliness they seek. Perhaps they want simply to untether themselves from Earth and its trifling concerns like workers’ rights. There is something of both these ideas in Olga Ravn’s latest novel, published in Danish in 2018, before…

  • The Pastor, a novel by Hanne Ørstavik, reviewed by Titus Chalk

    The Pastor, a novel by Hanne Ørstavik, reviewed by Titus Chalk

    For Liv, the titular pastor in Hanne Ørstavik’s 2004 novel—translated from the Norwegian for the first time by Martin Aitken—language is the original sin. Indeed, God spoke the world into being, perhaps why Liv’s faith is wafer-thin, and why she so is deeply troubled by the violence inherent in language, the binaries it creates, the…