{"product_id":"the-calf-9781913744243","title":"The Calf","description":"\u003cb\u003ePart Appalachian gothic, part science fiction, part Norwegian western, \u003ci\u003eThe Calf\u003c\/i\u003e is a darkly comic backwoods phantasmagoria that bends genres until they break in a feat of linguistic experimentation.\u003c\/b\u003eIn a subterranean office labyrinth somewhere in Hadeland, Norway, a mechanical barn gnome with a metal bucket for a head spends his days shredding paper, brewing coffee, and trying to forget a certain late summer night in the woods sometime in the 1980s. That night--hazy, mythic, traumatic--centers on the Mare Cooter Canyon and a ragtag bunch of teenage boys calling themselves \"the cowboys.\" As the narrator's memory crackles and sputters, we encounter grotesque archetypes: a resurrected Christ-like figure called the Dead Feller, a mysterious, moon-faced woman who may be an employment caseworker, and a strange, amorphous alien called the Calf. What happened out there, and who--or what--is telling the story? Drawing on the linguistic inventions of Twain and Faulkner, translator David M. Smith boldly reimagines the rural dialect of Leif H ghaug's original, bringing it into a lush, inventive Appalachian English. The result is a voice that's as haunted, broken, and unforgettable as its narrator. \u003ci\u003eThe Calf\u003c\/i\u003e is a howl from the margins, a cracked hymn of language under pressure--conceived and written alongside the author's Norwegian translation of \u003ci\u003eFinnegans Wake\u003c\/i\u003e, and unmistakably charged with that book's spirit of dream logic, doubleness, and rapturous musicality.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eBinding Type:\u003c\/b\u003e Paperback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e Fum d'Estampa\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 10\/28\/2025\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN:\u003c\/b\u003e 9781913744243\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 200\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eReview Citations: \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e 08\/25\/2025\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Leif H\u0026#195;\u0026#184;ghaug","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51634855215285,"sku":"9781913744243","price":14.41,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0473\/0804\/6492\/files\/img_5a106f52-3721-43c5-aff3-678949355926.jpg?v=1756789222","url":"https:\/\/pastforward.org\/products\/the-calf-9781913744243","provider":"Past Forward","version":"1.0","type":"link"}