1985. Nineteen-year-old Filip spends his days playing football, listening to music on his Walkman and drawing, searching for something he cannot yet name. He lives in a large family house shared with his grandparents, where an old rift between his grandfather Arnstein and Arnstein’s brother Truls still governs the atmosphere. The cause appears trivial, an apple tree dropping fruit across a boundary fence, but the bitterness between the brothers speaks of something far older and deeper.
1913. With Europe on the brink of upheaval, Arnstein and Truls are sent into the forest for the summer by their stern father, determined that his sons should learn to endure hardship. Left to fend for themselves among travellers, log drivers and Forest Finns, the brothers live from the land, fishing, hunting and roaming the vast woodland. Cold and hungry, yet bound together by fierce loyalty and affection, they crown themselves the princes of Pauper’s Pond, rulers of a world shaped by freedom, imagination and shared struggle. Until, back home, their father makes a decision that will change everything.
Spanning generations, The Princes of Pauper’s Pond is a vibrant, magical and deeply affecting novel about brotherhood and belonging, about finding joy and love in the open landscape, and about those single moments that can seal a family’s fate … forever…
