Ernst Smith reiser til den lille kystbyen Arcachon, Frankrike, for å hvile. Han leier en ombygget garasje. Men noe uroer ham: Duftene etter mennesket som bodde der før ham, og verten i huset ved siden av som alltid banker i gulvet med krykken. Første natt finner han en tykk svart snegle på gulvet. Neste dag finner han en filmrull i et skap. Ernst Smith får ikke hvile. For denne mesterlige poetiske thrilleren fikk Lars Saabye Christensen Rivertonprisen i 1987.
Author
Lars Saabye Christensen is a gifted storyteller, a narrator who is imaginative, but equally down to earth. His realism alternates between poetic image and ingenious incident, conveyed in supple metropolitan language and slang that never smacks of the artificial or forced. His heroes possess a good deal of self-irony. Indeed, critics have drawn parallels with the black humour of Woody Allen. But beneath the liveliness of his portrayal melancholy always lurks in the books. Since his début in 1976 Saabye Christensen has written ten collections of poetry, five collections of short stories and twelve novels. His great break through came with the novel Beatles in 1984. The book store sale of over 200,000 copies of the Norwegian edition has made this one of the greatest commercial successes in Norway, and it was voted the best novel of the last 25 years by Dagbladet's readers in 2006.
