From the back cover:

Out Stealing Horses has been embraced across the world as a classic, a novel of universal relevance and power. Panoramic and gripping, it tells the story of Trond Sander, a sixty-seven-year-old man who has moved from the city to a remote, riverside cabin, only to have all the turbulence, grief, and overwhelming beauty of his youth come back to him one night while he's out on a walk. From the moment Trond sees a strange figure coming out of the dark behind his home, the reader is immersed in a decades-deep story of searching and loss, and in the precise, irresistible prose of a newly crowned master of fiction.

This was a beautiful book! The translator must have done a great job because the prose just flowed in a wonderful way. I got a little tangled up in the timeline now and then as the flashbacks to Trond's boyhood were not linear, but Petterson usually dropped me some sort of hint somewhere in there so I could order events in my head. The ending seemed a little abrupt, and I wanted to know more about Trond's present life - did he get a phone so his daughter could call once in a while? Did he ever talk to his neighbor about their parents? I suppose the novel is more about memory and that mysterious transition from childhood to adulthood than about a retired man living in the woods, but I still thought the retired man was a pretty interesting fellow.

Now this is heading away to rootmartin, who won the January Doldrums sweep (a bit late getting out, but I really wanted to read it first!)

Thanks, zosime! What a lovely surprise today. I'm really looking forward to reading this book.