To Siberia

Born into a troubled family in a Danish seaside town, the heroine of To Siberia clings to her brother, and he to her, with a desperate devotion. The novel tells the story of their powerful bond and their agonizing separation. Neglected by their parents, the two wander the streets of their village as young children, dreaming of a different life. The sister fantasizes about escaping to Siberia, but that dream seems ever more remote as her brother becomes a young man and disappears into the resistance movement against the Nazi occupation. Their separation begins years of wandering for her, and Petterson's novel traces the separate struggles of brother and sister with empathy, insight, and pathos.

With the same crystalline prose that made Out Stealing Horses a bestselling sensation, Per Petterson here draws a portrait of a sister and brother bound together powerfully by birth, and separated painfully by circumstance.