D a l ke y a r c h i v e p r ess
Selected Stories Kjell Askildsen
Translated by Sean Kinsella
A man and a woman in an isolated house, surrounded by nothing, or nearly nothing, besieged by urban desert or actual wilderness, by alcohol, cigarettes, and ghosts, by mothers, fathers, and lovers who have disappeared. Written in an unadorned style, with flashes of pitch-black humor, Kjell Askildsen’s devastating stories convey in few words life and thought as they are actually experienced, balanced between despair and hope, memories and expectations. He is widely recognized as one of the greatest Norwegian writers of the twentieth century and among the greatest short-story authors of all time.
“Kjell Askildsen’s dry, absurd humor is not unlike that of Beckett. . . . for sale throughout the world
His short stories are packed with irony, and the dialogue is sharp and expressive.”
“A great storyteller. . . . Sincere, devastating and merciless . . . can be compared to Hemingway and Carver stylistically, and Kafka, Beckett, and Camus thematically.” —El Pais
—Times Literary Supplement Kjell Askildsen
“No current Norwegian writer can say so much in so few words. No one leaves you with so much food for thought and reflection as Kjell Askildsen. . . . I have always had to return to his books. I never finish with them.” —Jahn Otto Johansen, Aftenposten
$12.00 / £8.50 paper 978-1-62897-028-9 M ay 100 pages N o r w e g i a n L i t e r at u r e N o r w e g i a n L i t e r at u r e S e r i e s
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was born in 1929 in Mandal, southern Norway.
At the age of twenty-four, he published his first collection of short stories. In the 1960s and 1970s, his output was restricted to short novels, yet he turned his back on the form for good after his 1983 novella, Thomas F’s Last Notes to the General Public, which is available in English in the collection A Sudden Liberating Thought. In 1991, Askildsen was nominated to the Nordic Council’s Prize for Literature. His books have been translated into more than twenty languages. He lives and works in Norway.