Arnold Nilsen from Røst in Lofoten, a circus artist and salesman, known as "The Wheel" after rolling spectacularly down a slope as a child, is allowed to move in with Jebsen's family, thanks to his self-confidence and his yellow Buick.

Fred begins to show more respect for Barnum and his ability to write down his dreams, and gives him a typewriter as a birthday gift.

[3][4] Øystein Rottem of Dagbladet made comparisons between the novel and the works of Knut Hamsun, Göran Tunström and John Irving, but also called it "a true Saabye novel.

Here he offers himself at full, puts his whole previous authorship at stake, in a single gigantic bet where he has raised the pot with everything from shelved five-øre coins to newly printed 1000-kroner bills, everyday memory glimpses and brightly polished metaphors."

He wrote that while there might be some longueurs which could have been trimmed, it is nothing that prevents the work from "pulling up, high up", and "give the readers a wealth of sparkling moments".

Regarding the structure, he wrote that the author uses time and peripheral characters to "creatively disturb any conventional narrative forward motion", and that "Mystery is of the book's very essence, for all the clarity, the realism of the presentation."

Binding wrote: "The Half Brother - translated into compulsively readable prose by writer Kenneth Steven - is no mere interesting example of contemporary Scandinavian writing; it's a deeply felt, intricately worked and intellectually searching work of absolutely international importance.

"[3] Gerard Woodward wrote in The Daily Telegraph: "The Half Brother is the kind of big, ambitious, panoramic novel of the sort we tend to think only Americans write these days.

Woodward also wrote: "The pace slackens at times, particularly towards the end but, for the most part, the language has enough energy and inventiveness to carry us along.

[8] The Adjudicating Committee described the winner as a "richly nuanced novel", with a story that has "a keynote of distance, loss and grief but has a redeeming feature of humour, friendship and black hope.

Produced for NRK by the production company Monster, the series consists of eight 50-minute episodes directed by Per-Olav Sørensen, and starring Frank Kjosås, Nicolai Cleve Broch, and Agnes Kittelsen.