A Great Deserted Landscape

"A master of the short story, Kjell Askildsen’s unadorned style is not so much concerned with the manipulation of plotlines as with the manipulation of the reader’s feelings and allegiances, with the presentation of characters as people, real people, people so like us that it’s creepy, uncanny," writes

Becky McMullan, editor of Selected Stories by Kjell Askildsen, in her introduction to this issue of Recommended Reading. "The reader should arrive at the last sentence feeling shocked, yes, but not because of some 'twist in the tale' à la Roald Dahl. The shock is rather generated by the feeling of uneasiness at having finished the story without any sense of closure; shocked by the humanity of the characters, something seems off somehow. The reader is left behind, alone in "A Great Deserted Landscape.'

"A not-so-traditional tale of sibling rivalry told from the brother’s perspective, 'A Great Deserted Landscape' is a story about a brother, about a husband, a possible murderer, an incestuously minded creep, a self-centered jerk. It’s also about his sister, his dead wife, his mother, his adulterous father, but mostly just about him. At least that’s how he’d see it."