Where I write these words.
Where the memory of those events lingers,
where I will reach back, and meet her.
I will hold her close, again, and again.
I will look into his eyes, in this stillness,
and weep, as he wept. I will wait.
Literary as well as suspense readers will find The Syphilis Artist disturbing, engrossing, and compelling; rich in its portrait of a Norwegian artist who creates more than art (“The evil that men do, that lives after them.”) as his legacy.-Diane Donovan The Midwest Book Review
The Syphilis Artist
Per Olav Verås
Vanguard Press
978-1800162297 $15.99 Paper/$4.99 ebook
“I know she watches me.”
The Syphilis Artist is a novel of mystery and social isolation that follows the life of Norwegian artist Andreas Olav Hansen as he pursues his art and questions his obsession with Mia Miraja. She seems like a fantasy dream until she shows up on his doorstep in real life to break into his isolated world and introduce vast changes to his art and psyche.
The story opens with a vivid dream of the author flying over a destroyed town as a blackbird who then transforms into a vision of himself as a boy hiding, with a girl, from her destructive, approaching mother.
As events unfold both in reality and in the narrator’s visions and mind, it quickly becomes evident that a force of evil is an undercurrent in his world, as much as obsessive love. Descriptions of violence and deranged responses to life evolve as the circumstances of this nameless artist’s isolation come to life: “The way the little virus crept up on us, the little, mischievous thief. Now that a year has passed, like a day…An odd mischief because its awakening led me to this place, this old farmhouse. The way I wait out these minutes and hours, the way time passes.”
As hallucinations, reality, and responses to dreams and life emerge, readers interested in literary stories of mystery, isolation, and suspense will find much to think about, especially during these modern times of pandemic angst.
Per Olav Verås creates a character who is, in a sense, the Everyman of artists everywhere…an artist whose sketches pepper the story, and whose dreams of past, present, and future coalesce as the tale unfolds.
Perhaps the most compelling aspect of The Syphilis Artist lies in its buildup of events as the narrator seeks to “press the rewind button” on his life while navigating the treacherous waters of sanity, insanity, and love.
As Mia leads him to new revelations about his past, her identity, and their future, a sense of passion gone awry draws readers ever closer to the heart of evil’s creation.
To say that this story is a mystery or suspense piece would be to do it an injustice. While these genre fans will gain much from the evolving story, it’s the literature reader interested in psychological and interpersonal introspections who will best appreciate the many literary devices Per Olav Verås employs as he follows his character down the rabbit hole of truth and illusion.
Literary as well as suspense readers will find The Syphilis Artist disturbing, engrossing, and compelling; rich in its portrait of a Norwegian artist who creates more than art (“The evil that men do, that lives after them.”) as his legacy.
In this shattering and beautiful debut novel by Per Olav Verås, we see shades of Jerzy Kosinski’s The Painted Bird, and the truth is brought home that evil sometimes can never be escaped, or fixed, or forgotten
Pegasus Publishers
Copyright Per Olav Verås, 2020 from the novel THE SYPHILIS ARTIST (note I have blocked out some exciting text. You will have to buy the book to read further. )
… a bright summer’s day,
there is the scent of mint, and in the near distance, the
buildings, desolate and rust-colored, where the killing
occurred. I walk with a small crowd of silent survivors,
who are no longer prisoners. I will go inside the empty
buildings, and think, can whitewashed concrete walls
testify to the evil, will they speak?
– Mia Miraja Hansen
I am a native New Yorker. Most of my life has been lived in the United States.
I was fortunate to attend Stuyvesant High School. My pepper haired English teacher, Mrs. Hegarty, gave us students some advice. Memorize Shakespeare. Just do it, for the pleasure it gives. Shakespeare is the gift that keeps on giving. As now, in this listless moment, when those words whisper effortlessly, To Be Or Not To Be. I whisper the words, they come back now, line for line.
To be, or not to be, that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take Arms against a Sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them: to die, to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep, to say we end
The heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks
That Flesh is heir to? ‘Tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep,
To sleep, perchance to Dream; aye, there’s the rub,
For in that sleep of death, what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause. There’s the respect
That makes Calamity of so long life:
For who would bear the Whips and Scorns of time,
The Oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s Contumely,
The pangs of dispised Love, the Law’s delay,
The insolence of Office, and the spurns
That patient merit of th’unworthy takes,
When he himself might his Quietus make
With a bare Bodkin? Who would Fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovered country, from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have,
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,
And thus the native hue of Resolution
Is sicklied o’er, with the pale cast of Thought,
And enterprises of great pitch and moment,
With this regard their Currents turn awry,
And lose the name of Action. Soft you now,
The fair Ophelia? Nymph, in thy Orisons
Be all my sins remember’d.
The late and great Frank McCourt taught at Stuyvesant those heady years, back in the 70’s. His limerick voice is to me a balm on a frozen night.
I decided early on to initially self-publish, and sell locally. We will launch in the local library, local and bookshops and once the ball starts rolling, promote the book nationally, and internationally.
Why did I release the book in English? Simple answer-the first person voice, the text’s lyricism, the oddities of writing in the present tense, and the simple fact I am not fluent enough in Norwegian to give justice to Andreas Olav Hansen’s original voice.
Will it be translated to Norwegian? Let’s wait and see.
My name is Per Olav Verås. This website is home to my debut novel, The Syphilis Artist. Follow me on twitter at https://twitter.com/po_veras .
I walk across a field of flowers, a bright summer’s day, there is the scent of mint, and in the near distance, the buildings, desolate and rust-colored, where the killing occurred. I walk with a small crowd of silent survivors, who are no longer prisoners. I will go inside the empty buildings, and think, can whitewashed concrete walls testify to the evil, will they speak?
– Mia Miraja Hansen
The Syphilis Artist 