Halvor Aakhus
Published: 2012-10-01
Total Pages: 268
Get eBook
BOOK OF KNUT: A NOVEL BY KNUT KNUDSON (by Halvor Aakhus): A mathematician finds a novel written by her dead lover and subsequently transforms it into an annotated mathematical textbook, complete with homework problems. Its various nonverbal elements-paintings, musical scores, mathematical graphs, etc.-are all original compositions. The manuscript won the $10,000 Henfield Prize in May 2011, before publication by Jaded Ibis Productions (2012). "Halvor Aakhus is the smartest and most wildly inventive young writer to come around since David Foster Wallace. Knut rules!" -- David Leavitt, author of The Lost Language of Cranes and The Indian Clerk "Behold, the bastard child-thrice removed-of Padgett Powell, Barry Hannah, and Samuel Beckett. There's something very wrong and very right about the wires crossed in his head." -- Benjamin Percy, author of The Wilding and Refresh, Refresh "I once saw an extravagant castle in the wilds of Colorado, constructed from various materials over many years by one odd guy with a vision. This novel reminds me of that castle. It also reminds me of E.L. Doctorow's claim that excess in literature is its own justification. This wonderful novel is excessive -- beautifully and humanely and ecstatically excessive. I urge you to give yourself up to it." -- Chris Bachelder, author of U.S.! and Bear V. Shark "Halvor Aakhus should be paralyzed from depression and knowing too much. He has two or three doctoral dissertations, never consummated, in his head. The truly arcane stuff in Book of Knut is from his memory. This book won a prize getting to this point, and the judge said it was so outrageously complicated he could not not give it the prize. The reader should gird his or her loins if loins can be in one's head." -- Padgett Powell, author of You & I, Edisto, and The Interrogative Mood