Book Review: Knut Faldbakken’s Sweetwater (1976, trans. Joan Tate, 1994)

Preliminary note: This review appeared originally in the inaugural issue of Rachel S. Cordasco’s new magazine Small Planet: The SF in Translation Magazine. You can read the entire issue for free here! I plan on contributing one review of vintage SFF in translation for each issue. In addition to my review, there’s a fantastic range of other articles and interviews. Iain Stuart’s cover for the 1994 edition 4.5/5 (Very Good) Knut Faldbakken (1941-), a prolific Norwegian novelist, wrote a science-fictional duology titled Sweetwater early in his career. The first volume, Twilight Country (1974, trans. Joan Tate, 1993), followed an odd collection of refugees from a disintegrating urban metropolis, the titular Sweetwater, as they cast off the entangling membranes of lost paths and the weight of melancholy souls and attempt to chart a new beginning in the city Dump. In volume two, Sweetwater (1976, trans. Joan Tate, 1994), a deathly equilibrium is reached. In an obliquely hinted at dystopia,…