The Sixteen Trees of the Somme - Lars Mytting

By Norway's bestselling novelist and the author of NORWEGIAN WOOD, a family story of epic scale. 

Edvard grows up on a remote mountain farmstead in Norway with his taciturn grandfather, Sverre. The death of his parents, when he was three years old, has always been shrouded in mystery - he has never been told how or where it took place and has only a distant memory of his mother. But he knows that the fate of his grandfather's brother, Einar, is somehow bound up with this mystery.

One day a coffin is delivered for his grandfather long before his death - a meticulous, beautiful piece of craftsmanship. Perhaps Einar is not dead after all. Edvard's desperate quest to unlock the family's tragic secrets takes him on a long journey - from Norway to the Shetlands, and to the battlefields of France - to the discovery of a very unusual inheritance. The Sixteen Trees of the Somme is about the love of wood and finding your own self, a beautifully intricate and moving tale that spans an entire century.

Mytting's book is as much a romantic historical thriller as it is a book of promise, a page-turner as it is a reflective journey into selfhood, history, life's meaning and individual moral responsibility.

Translated from the Norwegian by Paul Russell Garrett