Growing up in sixties Oslo, Barnum lives with an extended, eccentric family and his older half-brother, Fred, who was conceived after the rape of their mother in the dying days of World War II. Barnum seems to have stopped growing and Fred, implicated in a tragedy that leaves a family member dead, becomes mute - only roused when he hears 'Living Doll' one time too many. The two half-brothers embark on their seperate courses, Fred becoming a boxer and Barnum a scriptwriter, and it is twenty-seven years before a fax from their dying mother offers Barnum the chance to see his brother again.

This literary marvel tells the story of an ordinary Norwegian family, set apart by extraordinary family members, with unsentimental charm, exuberant comedy and devastating tragedy.

Compulsively readable prose... A deeply felt, intricately worked and intellectually searching work of absolutely international importance * Guardian *
The Half Brother is like Paul Auster's The Book of Illusions meeting Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections * Independent *
An ambitious, panoramic novel-It moves effortlessly from surreal comedy to touching scenes of domestic intimacy... A big rewarding read -- Gerard Woodward * Telegraph *
Powerful, dramatic and magical * Daily Mail *
Exhilarating...delivered with clarity, energy and imaginative force * New Statesman *

Lars Saabye Christensen is Norway's leading contemporary writere. He is the author of many novels as well as short stories and poetry. Christensen has won many prizes, including the Nordic Prize 2002, the Tarj Vesaas Prize for First Fiction, the Critics Prize and the Bookseller's Prize. His writing has been published throughout Europe, in the US and in Pakistan.