In Home we encounter Anne Karin for the first time as a four-year-old in the summer of 1942 at the Hestnes farm in the village of Valsøyfjord in western Norway. We follow her until the age of seventeen, vividly experiencing life on the farm and in the village. Little Anne Karin is very attached to her siblings, parents and grandparents – perhaps particularly to her grandfather Nils who was a radical government politician for many years, but in his older days devotes his time to grandchildren, story-telling, and his beloved horses. A dramatic high point of the book is Anne Karin’s portrayal of her mother’s illness and
subsequent death, and the consequences of this terrible loss for Anne Karin and her family. It is in this very setting Anne Karin Elstad has found much of the material for her novels. Her many readers can once again delight in her unmistakable style and her rich depictions of characters and their environment.