Reuters reports that Norwegian author Per Petterson and his translator Anne Born won the world’s richest literary prize for a single work of fiction in English on Thursday for the novel OUT STEALING HORSES. Petterson collected 100,000 euros ($133,000), of which Born will get 25,0000, for his novel focusing on a solitary 67-year-old Norwegian widower whose chance encounter with a character from his youth triggers painful memories.
“It is a very happy man that stands before you. A surprised man,” Petterson said after Dublin’s Lord Mayor named him as winner of the 12th International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. “It seems with this book I am the boy with the golden trousers and every time I put my hand in my pockets I pick up a golden coin,” he said. “It is so cool.”