Gyldendal Agency Highlights by Gyldendal Norsk Forlag

Gyldendal Agency HIGHLIGHTS Selected authors from Gyldendal and Kolon

Gyldendal Agency proudly presents… As the Bible has already told us: “Of making many books there is no end” (Ecclesiastes 12:12). If it were true 2,500 years ago, it is no less true today. Orienting oneself in this jungle is not an easy task. IN THIS CATALOGUE we have done some of the work for those of you looking for gold in the banks of the river, gathering the highlights of Gyldendal’s rich catalogue, from canonized classics like Tarjei Vesaas and Cora Sandel to younger, outstanding writers like Johan Harstad and Ingvild Hedemann Rishøi. Common to all of them is that they have what we would call Stoner potential (after John Williams’s novel Stoner, which was

a success 50 years after its release): Their books have timeless qualities that can find an audience at any time, anywhere, and if that should happen, there’s a wealth of writing to choose from. We have illustrated this magazine primarily with author portraits – what is a publisher other than the sum of the authors it publishes? The other illustrations are photographs of the Gyldendal House, designed by the great Norwegian

PHOTO: ANNA-JULIA GRANBERG

architect Sverre Fehn (1924-2009). The front is adorned with the so-called Danish House, which Fehn placed in the midst of the modernist body of the building, as a symbol of the roots of the publisher going back to the Golden Age of Norwegian literature, when Ibsen and the other greats were being published by Gyldendal in Copenhagen. For all who work at the Gyldendal House, this architecture is a daily reminder that culture is literally in the walls: we strive for quality in everything we do, and the ambition is to be constantly creating the classics of the future. We hope you will find yourself curious and inspired, and look forward to telling you more when we meet face to face! Feel free to contact us at foreignrights@gyldendal.no, or personally: Anne Cathrine Eng anne.cathrine.eng@gyldendal.no Bjarne Buset bjarne.buset@gyldendal.no Anne Louise Morseth-Nordbryhn anne.morseth@gyldendal.no

From left to right: Bjarne, Anne Louise, Anne Cathrine

Content

8 Fiction 54 Classics 68 Poetry 86 Non-fiction

Gyldendal: A Short History

1770

1871

1885

1890

1925

Gyldendal Publishing House was originally founded in 1770 in Copenhagen by Danish bookseller Søren Gyldendal. At that time there was already a strong group of Norwegian writers, called Det norske selskap – the Norwegian Society – among students in Copenhagen.

The latter half of the 19th century is often called the Golden Age in Norwegian literature, and is dominated by “the Four Greats”: Ibsen, Bjørnson, Kielland and Lie. A prerequisite for this Golden Age was the common Danish-Norwegian written language, and the fact that Norwegian authors were published by Gyldendal in Copenhagen for a common Nordic market.

In Gyldendal we like to call Amalie Skram “the Fifth Great”. She debuted with the novel Constance Ring in 1885, and excelled in bold portrayals of women and pointed criticism of marriage in this and the subsequent books Lucie (1888), Ms. Inés (1891) and Betrayed (1892).

As Amalie Skram was writing her naturalistic novels, Knut Hamsun carried out his famous patricide on the Four Great realists from the generation before him. During a lecture tour in 1890, he called Kielland a writer of entertainment, and Bjørnson a teacher for overgrown children: “Norwegian literature has only concerned itself with social reform and genre fiction. It’s about bankruptcy and fraud, the fate of two lovers and narrow-track railways...”

After the union with Sweden was dissolved in 1905, the demand for a separate Norwegian identity grew, and this was true of literature too. It felt like a national humiliation that we still lived in literary union with Denmark: the slogan “Norwegian books in Norwegian publishing houses” was launched.

In hindsight they are most famous for their drinking songs and memorial verses. The illustration shows one of Johan Herman Wessel’s memorials, drawn by Theodor Kittelsen.

The period is also called the Modern Breakthrough, strongly characterized by Danish critic Georg Brandes who, in 1871, formulated his famous manifesto: “That literature in our days is alive shows itself in the fact that it creates debate on contemporary problems.” Henrik Ibsen became internationally famous with his first critical realist drama of Pillars of Society in 1877, closely followed by A Doll’s House (1879), Ghosts (1881) and An Enemy of the People (1882).

Her principle work is, nevertheless, the series of novels on the people of Hellemyr (1887-1898), which is regarded as the major work of Norwegian naturalism. Skram was inspired by Flaubert and Zola, but she also had profound psychological insight, and was a master in depicting states of mind characterized by anxiety, jealousy and mental imbalance.

In opposition to Brandes’ demand to put problems under debate, he put the soul itself under the magnifying glass, to write about “the strange activities of the nerves, the whispering of the blood, the prayer of the bone shafts, the entire unconscious inner life.”

In 1925, Gyldendal’s norwegian department broke away from the parent company in Copenhagen, and so Gyldendal Norsk Forlag (Gyldendal Norwegian Publishing House) was founded, with Harald Grieg as director and publisher. Knut Hamsun used his Nobel Prize money and became the largest shareholder in the publisher. The caricature shows Grieg carrying “the Four Greats” home to Norway.

History

1926

1957

1968

1987

2009

One of the first discoveries Grieg made at his new publishing house was the writer working under the pseudonym Cora Sandel. He read a short story of hers in the journal Mot Dag and became so excited that he urged the unknown author to write a novel. The result was the debut novel Alberta and Jacob from 1926. Then came two more novels with Alberta as the protagonist, and the trilogy about her is among the greatest Norwegian novels of the interwar period.

Tarjei Vesaas wrote more than 25 books during a literary career spanning almost 50 years, but his most acclaimed works were published late in the career. The novel The Birds (1957), generally regarded as his masterpiece, is the story of the tragic fate of simpleminded Mattis, a deeply nuanced examination of identity and responsibility, with abundant narrative suspense, silent intensity and somber, beautiful lyricism.

Kjartan Fløgstad debuted as a modernist lyric poet with the collection Pilgrimage in 1968, the year of protests, just before Norwegian literature was hit by what his author colleague Dag Solstad has called “the great political revival that has struck our country.”

In 1987, Herbjørg Wassmo became the first female Norwegian author to receive the Nordic Council’s Literature prize, for her Tora Trilogy. The novels chart Tora’s painful progress from childhood to maturity, her stepfather’s sexual assault of her, her mother’s selfeffacement, and the coldness of the local people.

Tomas Espedal is one of the foremost representatives of a trend that has become increasingly clear in Norway in the 2000s, reaching its peak with Knausgaard’s My Struggle: the use of autobiographical material in the novel.

Of The Ice Palace (1963), Doris Lessing said in a review of the English translation in 1993: “How simple this novel is. How subtle. How strong. How unlike any other. It is unique. It is unforgettable. It is extraordinary.” The Ice Palace earned Vesaas the prestigious Nordic Council’s Literature prize.

Fløgstad never became a politically correct member of that movement, but he has never stopped writing politically engaged books, primarily novels. Literarily, he can not be called a social realist, which was the dominant trend in Norway in the 1970s, but rather a social modernist or magical realist. In any case he is referred to as “one of the most important narrators of the Norwegian postwar literature, and perhaps its foremost artisan of language” (Per Thomas Andersen in The History of Norwegian Literature).

Between 1989 and -97, she followed the Tora trilogy up with her immensely popular trilogy on Dina, which she returned to 20 years later with The One Who Sees (2017), widely acclaimed by the critics as “Wassmo at her finest” (NRK).

With Espedal, it was already apparent in Blond from 1996, changing the genre description from “novel” to “memoir”. Since then he has continued to portray himself and his loved ones in a way that allows commentators to say that “the authorship may be disturbing in its selfexposure.” The novel Against Art won the Critics’ Prize in 2009, and was called by Johan Harstad in Klassekampen “one of the most beautiful, most important books I have read for many years”.

Fiction

sit down on the floor and leaf through the pages. Columns, names, objects. These are gift lists for Christmas, neatly numbered. The first list is from 1963, the year I was born. The last is from 2003. Some of the names I know well – cousins, aunts and uncles. Others are just vague memories, of white hair, tightly tied in a bun at the back of the neck – of dark clothes and magnificent moustaches. I suddenly recall people I´ve forgotten: Mrs Hansen, who used to clean for us in the early 70s, and who would let me help her out while telling me the lewdest stories. And those freaky, young neighbours, who smelt of spices and sweat, went about naked in the summer months and read books they always wanted to discuss with my mother. And my mother´s friends, who all had cute nicknames. On every page there are thirty five, perhaps forty names in the first column. These are the people my parents gave Christmas presents to. In the next column my brother Elling´s name appears, then my own, and when my sister, Anne Johanne, was born she too got her column – indicating what she had given to some of these relatives. And at the back of each sheet: a list of the presents my parents got in return – and from whom. And the same for us children – every year accounted for until we turned eighteen. All these gifts she recorded. Pondered, planned, purchased, crafted, inherited. Wished for and provided with. All in all there must be thousands of them.

Cecilie Enger Mother’s Gifts (Mors gaver)

Fiction

I wake up and realize that my arm has grown older, it lays by the side of my head; during the night I have placed it against my cheek and it makes me think of my mother, I can see her clearly, laying beside me like she never did: She lays beside me with her hand placed gently on my cheek and I miss her, terribly. Tomas Espedal Against Art (Imot kunsten)

Dahl combines rare psychological insight with elegant prose, rich with dark humour.

PHOTO: ROLF M. AAGAARD

Fiction

Kjell Ola Dahl Kjell Ola Dahl (1958–) is a critically acclaimed writer of crime fiction.

DAHL IS A Master of Arts with an academic background in psychology, law and business administration. He came to attention with his very first crime novel, 1993’s Lethal Investments, where his police investigators Gunnarstranda and Frølich were first introduced. He has since published a series of crime novels about these investigators, many of them translated and published abroad. In some countries, amongst them the US, UK, Canada and Spain, he goes by the name K. O. Dahl. In 2000 he won the Riverton Prize for The Last Fix, and The Courier (2015) won him both the Brage Prize and The Riverton Prize. Dahl has also had a fruitful collaboration with film director Hisham Zaman, which has resulted in two critically acclaimed feature films, Winterland and Before the Snow Falls. The Last Shadow of Doubt, Dahl’s novel from 1998, was

dramatized for NRK radio, Norway’s national public broadcaster. Of The Man in The Window (2001), Ole Jacob Hoel of Adresseavisen wrote: “There is humor, there is originality and there is authority throughout this novel, which I would rate even higher than last year’s Riverton Prize winner The Last Fix. This reeks of a true Norwegian crime story.” As a writer of crime fiction, Dahl combines rare psychological insight with elegant prose, rich with dark humour. He excels in effortlessly transitioning between plotlines set at different points in time, his balance of solid, downto-earth prose and subtle imagery drawing the reader into the text. Intense and efficient, his plots always maintain a firm believability. Dahl lives at his family estate in Feiring in Eidsvoll, where, besides writing, he runs a farm.

Awards 2015: Brageprisen, Rivertonprisen 2001: Utmerkelsen «Beste kriminal», forfatterne.net 2000: Rivertonprisen

Selected titles The Courier (Kureren), crime novel, 2015 The Ice Swimmer (Isbaderen), crime novel, 2011 The Woman Wrapped in Plastic (Kvinnen i plast), crime novel, 2010 Little Drummer Boy (Lille tambur), crime novel, 2003 The Man in the Window (Mannen i vinduet), crime novel, 2001 The Last Fix (En liten gyllen ring), crime novel, 2000 The Last Shadow of Doubt (Siste skygge av tvil), crime novel, 1998 The Miniature (Miniatyren), crime novel, 1996 Lethal Investments (Dødens investeringer), crime novel, 1993

The Courier (Kureren), 2015

The Last Fix (En liten gyllen ring), 2000

1942. The Jewish courier Ester is betrayed, narrowly avoiding arrest by the Gestapo, surviving by escaping to Stockholm, Sweden. Here she meets Gerhard Falkum. Leaving his daughter behind, Falkum, like Ester, has fled the Germans. However, he has also fled the suspicion of him having murdered his wife Åse, who helped Ester get across the Swedish border. Their burgeoning relationship ends when Falkum appears to perish in a fire.

Katrine Bratterud, a recovering drug addict, is almost finished with her time in rehab. One evening, sitting on the shore of a lake, she senses that she is not alone. The discovery of Katrine’s corpse the following day brings detectives Gunnarstranda and Frølich onto the case and into a web of secrets and lies that stretches back generations. Katrine’s dark past made her easy pray to a series of men, who immediately become suspects – and victims of the killer’s rage. Dahl gracefully merges the suspense of the classical whodunit with the detailed precision of the police procedural novel.

In 1967, Ester has returned to Norway, having worked for the Israeli intelligence since the end of the war. Then Falkum shows up in Oslo, wishing to reconnect with his daughter. Why has he turned up 25 years later? Stumbling across new information about him, Ester is forced to reexamine her past, and to revive her rusty combat skills.

Fiction

Cecilie Enger Cecilie Enger (1963–), journalist and author, has made herself noted with her hushed, but brilliant novels, many of them with a biographical or autobiographical point for departure. A VERSATILE writer, Enger debuted with the novel Necessity in 1994, but didn’t receive her major breakthrough until 2013, when her critically appraised, partially autobiographical novel Mother’s Gifts earned her The Bookseller Prize (Bokhandlerprisen) and was nominated for the Critics’ Prize. In addition to Mother’s Gifts, she has written seven novels in which her clear prose and vivid human portraits are central, while at the same time demonstrating excellent storytelling abilities. Enger depicts her characters with intimacy and warmth; the style is characteristic and original. Through sharp observations, parallel plot lines and surprising twists, she communicates people’s quest for an authentic life. Her range is wide, from historic novels – like The Chamber Maid (2011), the fascinating story of Queen Maud’s chambermaid, based

on conversations with people who knew the real-life models of the novel, and Storming Heaven (2007), the story of Ellisif Wessel, an upper class woman forsaking her comfortable life to engage in the struggle for the least fortunate people in the society – to contemporary novels. Enger’s writing is characterized by humor and melancholy, and offers fresh takes on the big, existential questions. She often tells her stories in a low key, taking her time, without ever losing the characteristic nerve of her texts. Writing of memorable lives, with a cast of minor characters as colourful as the major ones, Enger has the ability to enthrall her readers, and have her stories linger with them for a long time. Cecilie Enger lives in Asker. In addition to working as an author she also works as a feature journalist for the Magazine in Dagens Næringsliv.

Awards 2013: Bokhandlerprisen 2008: Amalie Skram-prisen 2007: Neshornprisen (Book of the year in Klassekampen) 1994: Nota Benes kulturpris

Selected titles Breathe for Me (Pust for meg), novel, 2017 Mother’s Gifts (Mors gaver), novel, 2013 The Chamber Maid (Kammerpiken), novel, 2011 Storming Heaven (Himmelstormeren), novel, 2007 Look in Mercy (Se i nåde), novel, 2003 The Henriksen Brothers (Brødrene Henriksen), novel, 2000 A Buzzcut Story (Kjell Aksel. En snauklippet historie), children’s book, 1999 Extremity (Ytterpunkt), novel, 1996 Necessity (Nødvendigheten), novel, 1994

Breathe for Me (Pust for meg), 2017

Mother’s Gifts (Mors gaver), 2013

Anesthesiologist Carla Ruud drives from Oslo to her hometown to visit her mother at the nursing home. With her is a young woman, Synne. On the icy road, Carla loses control of the car and they drive off a cliff. Despite all her medical experience, Carla cannot save Synne’s life.

Whilst clearing out the house when her mother is admitted to a nursing home with severe Alzheimer’s, Cecilie comes across her mother’s records of the family’s Christmas gifts over four decades: gifts given and received, to and from people with very different lives. With the lists as a vantage point, Enger writes the history of her family from the late 19th century until today.

Breathe for Me is a novel about three generations of women – Carla’s mother, Carla herself, and Carla’s daughter – about the vulnerability of being dependent on those close to you, and about losing control over your life. One can withstand pain as long as it has a purpose, but when it has none – what then? The day you no longer feel needed, who do you become?

Parallel to this story runs another story. Over the course of the two years it has taken Cecilie Enger to write Mother’s Gifts, we see the gradual erosion of her mother’s memory and personality. This is a novel about gifts, memory and our yearning to hold on to time.

Classics

Through sharp observations, parallel plots and surprising twists, she communicates people’s quest for an authentic life.

PHOTO: LINDA NÆSFELDT

PHOTO: JAKOB DALL

One can open up any book by Espedal and read a couple of sentences, and it rings unmistakably Espedalesque. He blurs the lines between fictional prose, essays and poetry: his words, which are of a striking musicality and rhythm, seems to stir on the page, an immense intensity being built up by clever use of repetitions and variations over any given theme.

Fiction

Tomas Espedal At once deeply personal and meticulously composed, award-winning author Tomas Espedal’s (1961–) novels draw on a number of different genres, such as the essay, letter, diary, autobiography and travelogue. BORN IN Bergen, Espedal has lived in or close to the city for most of his life, the cobblestone streets and various apartments of family and lovers a recurring backdrop in his works. He made his literary debut in 1988, and has since written novels and collections of short prose, as well as a book of texts and photographs (My Private Life, 2014). Both in text and pictures, Espedal balances the personal, the intimate and the distinctly crafted, partly erasing, partly putting into play the borders between Tomas Espedal, the author of the books, and Tomas Espedal, the author in the books. The art and act of writing – as labor, as necessity – is one of the recurring themes in his works; as is love, loss, art and family. One can open up any book by Espedal and read a couple of sentences, and it rings unmistakably Espedalesque. He blurs the lines between the novelistic, the

essayistic and the poetic: his words, which are of a striking musicality and rhythm, seems to stir on the page, an immense intensity being built up by clever use of repetitions and variations over any given theme. Adresseavisen wrote: “No one, neither in the country, nor in the cities – not even Karl Ove Knausgård – writes prose as beautiful as Espedal”. For a long time, he remained a well-kept secret, and for each new publication the critics grew more nonplussed as to why he wasn’t widely read. Tramp (2006) served as his breakthrough, cementing his position as one of our most esteemed novelists, and reaching a wider audience. Also Against Art (2009) was extremely well received. Against Nature (2011) examines factory work, love’s labor, the job of writing; The Year (2016), written in verse, takes the poetic aspect of his prose further still.

Selected awards and nominations 2014: Bergen kommunes kunstnerpris 2012: The International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award (nominated) 2011: Brageprisen 2009: Gyldendalprisen, Kritikerprisen 2006: Bergensprisen

Selected titles The Year (Året), novel, 2016 My Private Life (Mitt privatliv), photographic novel, 2014 Bergeners, novel, 2013 Against Nature (Imot naturen), novel, 2011 Against Art (Imot kunsten), novel, 2009 Tramp. Or the Art of Living a Wild and Poetic Life (Gå. Eller kunsten å leve et vilt og poetisk liv), novel, 2006 Letters. An Attempt. (Brev. Et forsøk), novel, 2005 Diary. Epitaphs. (Dagbok. Epitafer), novel, 2003 Biography. Forgetfulness (Biografi. Glemsel), novel, 1999 She and I (Hun og jeg), novel, 1991

Tramp. Or the Art of Living a Wild and Poetic Life (Gå. Eller kunsten å leve et vilt og poetisk liv), 2006

Against Art (Imot kunsten), 2009

Walking. Setting out on foot, out onto the open road; a romantic venture, yet filled with tough experiences: sleeping outdoors, losing one’s way, confronting one’s limitations, meeting people, passing through wilderness and towns. The walker travels without haste or fixed destination, he walks to be nearer to the things he comes across on his travels. He aims to live the wild and poetic life. He follows his own routes, but also takes detours in the footsteps of the famous literary wanderers: Rousseau, Wordsworth, Hölderlin and Rimbaud. He reads the poets and the philosophers in a quest to teach himself the art of what it is to walk.

Against Art is the story of a boy who becomes an author. It is about the profession of writing, about routines, responsibility and obstacles. It is also a story of his family, a story about being a father, a son and a grandson; it is about how preceding generations mark their successors, how we recognize them in ourselves. Lastly, it is a story about bereavement, the choices you make and the changes that are out of your control, about motion and rest, about moving to new places – and about living, living in spite of it all.

Fiction

Knut Faldbakken Few Norwegian authors have been so frequently read and have caused such regular and intense controversy as Knut Faldbakken (1941–).

WITH HIS musical style and virtuosity, his assured psychological insight and his strong sense of form, Faldbakken has, as a writer, launched a full frontal assault on taboos and clichés. His oeuvre is dramatic: pushing the limits of acceptability and permissibility, it deals with love and death, violence and sexuality. It is filled with humor and sombre drama – a dark mirror of contemporary life and modern society. Ever motivated by the need to tell a story that grips, surprises and provokes, Faldbakken places great emphasis on trigging his reader’s interest, and nudging him or her a little further down the road to experience and understanding. Faldbakken belongs to the school of psychological realism, which has a long tradition in Norwegian literature, but he is also a satirist

and exercises a social and cultural criticism that leans toward social realism. When Faldbakken was awarded the Brage Honour Prize in 2012, the jury stated that “Faldbakken’s oeuvre is one of the most prolific and extensive in Norwegian contemporary literature, and it is probably one of the most widely read and debated. He was among the first writers to really focus on what it means to be a modern man.” In recent years, Faldbakken has continued many of his central motifs in a rich and critically acclaimed output of crime novels, the Valmann series. He is an experienced writer who creates complex, believable characters. So far the Valmann series comprises eight books, and there are more to come.

Awards and nominations 2012: Brages hederspris 2006: Hamarprisen 2005: Hedmark fylkes kulturpris 1988: Hedemarksprisen 1978: Riksmålsprisen 1977: Nordisk Råds Litteraturpris (nominated) 1969: Gyldendals legat

Titles The Valmann series, crime novels, 2004– Bad Boy, novel, 1988 The Hunter (Glahn), novel, 1985 The Honeymoon (Bryllupsreisen), 1982 Adam’s Diary (Adams dagbok), novel, 1978 Sweetwater (Uår. Sweetwater), novel 1976 Twilight Country (Uår. Aftenlandet), novel, 1974 Insect Summer (Insektsommer), novel, 1972 The Sleeping Prince (Maude danser), novel, 1971 His Mother’s House (Sin mors hus), novel, 1969

The Border (Grensen), 2005

The Hunter (Glahn), 1985

A young woman is found dead by the edge of an isolated forest road. Was it an accident or is it a murder? A car full of frozen chickens is left abandoned in a ditch. A run-of-the-mill smuggling attempt or drug trafficking in disguise?

The Hunter, one of Faldbakken’s most daring novels, is his reckoning with Norwegian literature’s great master and guru, Knut Hamsun. Lieutenant Glahn, the main character of Hamsun’s Pan, is reincarnated in a modern, urban environment, stripped of his romance and mystery.

“Hauntingly good – in his third crime novel, Faldbakken dazzles us with his composition, language, character descriptions, and narrative drive. This is a cracking good book on trafficking and smuggling in the border regions of Finnskogen.” – VG

His work is dramatic: pushing at the outer limits of acceptability and permissibility, it deals with love and death, violence and sexuality.

PHOTO: MORTEN BRUN

Kjartan FlĂ¸gstad has a playful creative temper and is a spirited prose writer virtuoso, delighting in aphorisms, parody and bizarre humour. Behind this, however, stands a mordant social critic. PHOTO: JULIE PIKE

Fiction

Kjartan Fløgstad Kjartan Fløgstad (1944–) is widely regarded as one of the most important and influential Norwegian writers today.

HE STUDIED architecture at the Norwegian Technical University College in Trondheim, but soon changed to literature and linguistics at the University of Bergen. Fløgstad was once an industrial worker in his hometown, and worked in international shipping on a Norwegian cargo ship, travelling to different parts of the world, especially Latin America. His experiences from these journeys would come to have a significant impact on his writing. Since his literary debut with a collection of poems called Pilgrimage in 1968, he has written twenty novels, several collections of poems, essays, mysteries, short stories, travelogues, plays and nonfiction. In 1977 he was awarded the Nordic Council’s Prize for Dalen Portland, his international breakthrough. World Literature Today writes: “Kjartan Fløgstad

has a playful creative temper and is a spirited prose writer virtuoso, delighting in aphorisms, parody and bizarre humour. Behind this, however, stands a mordant social critic.” His novels always demonstrate a global awareness and a strong sense of solidarity with the oppressed. He also exposes the forces that shaped industrial and post-industrial society, and the belief that a wealth of knowledge and indispensable strategies for a meaningful existence can be found in different forms of popular culture, both traditional and modern. In his latest works, Fløgstad focuses on globalization (Grand Manila, 2006) and, in Crossing the River Jacob (2009), on power and ideology, and on what remains changed and unchanged after the Second World War. Fløgstad’s works has been translated into 11 languages.

Selected awards 2008: Brageprisens hederspris 2006: Kritikerprisen, P2-lytternes romanpris 2004: Medalla de Honor Presidencial Internacional Centenario Pablo Neruda (Chile) 1998: Gyldendalprisen, Brageprisen 1991: Gyldendals legat 1988: Pegasusprisen (USA) 1984: Stavanger Aftenblads kulturpris 1980: Norsk Litteraturkritikerlags pris 1978: Nordisk Råds litteraturpris 1975: Aschehougprisen

Selected titles Crossing the River Jacob (Grense Jakobselv), novel, 2009 Grand Manila, novel, 2006 Sudamericana, travelogue, 2000 Heads or Tails. A Wager (Kron og mynt. Eit veddemål), novel, 1998 Tyrannosaurus Text, essays, 1988 The Seventh Climate (Det syvende klima), novel, 1986 Fire and Flame (Fyr og flamme), novel, 1980 Dollar Road (Dalen Portland), novel, 1977

Crossing the River Jacob (Grense Jacobselv), 2009

Grand Manila 2006

In the early 1930’s, two well-educated young Germans make a decision that leads them to Oslo’s infamous Gestapo headquarters at Victoria Terrasse, to and across the Russian border, and later across all borders, into a state where they become champions over life and death.

Grand Manila is a breathtaking literary journey – as tremendous in its scope and breadth of vision as in its clarity of insight. The story begins in the 1950s with the lives of five families in Sauda, a small town in West Norway. From here the book sweeps the world, travelling back and forth in time and through generations. Ambitious, insightful and powerfully constructed, the novel earned Fløgstad several prizes.

Even in the blur of war there always exists a demarcation between good and bad. Does that demarcation still follow the same lines today? Horrified by the atrocities committed by the preceding generation, a young Norwegian tries to do the right thing by abiding by laws and rules. Will he still end up committing an injustice? Crossing the River Jacob is a novel about power and ideology, about what the war changed and what remained unchanged.

Fiction

Nikolaj Frobenius Nikolaj Frobenius (1965–) made his debut with the poetry and prose collection Whirl (Virvl) in 1986. He got his breakthrough both in Norway and abroad in 1996 with his novel De Sade’s Valet, and his books have been translated into numerous languages. FROBENIUS STUDIED film at The London Institute and has written several film scripts, including the thriller Insomnia (1997), which was subsequently produced in a new Hollywood version. In 2003 his play Mikromani was staged at the National Theatre in Oslo. Frobenius was the editor of Vinduet, a literary quarterly, from 1998-2000, and has worked as a feature film consultant since 2005. In The Glowing Love of Young William Oxenstjerne (1989) he writes in the tradition of the great, romantic novel, while he in Fable of Hell (1991) plays out the mysticism of the 17th century theosophist Swedenborg in present-day London. The main character in De Sade’s Valet (1996) is the servant of the Marques de Sade; it is written in a language which oscillates between the traditional epic narra-

tive and a contemporary internal monologue, lending the novel a rich evocation of the period and a detailed study both of a serial killer and a wide scope of human desires. Frobenius’ trademark is an assured talent and a linguistic skill beyond the norm. In his writing he switches between real, fictitious and historical scenarios with supreme confidence, and moves effortlessly in time and space. A central theme in several of his novels is the juxtaposition of the present and the past.

Frobenius is such a gifted craftsman when it comes to creating suspense that most crime writers should envy him – Dagbladet

Awards and nominations 2011: Prix Jean Monnet des Jeunes Européens (France) 2008: P2-lytternes romanpris, Ungdommens kritikerpris 2004: Oslo-prisen, Brageprisen (nominated) 1998: Aristeion-prisen (nominated) 1997: Anders Jahres pris for unge kunstnere

Selected titles All My Demons (Alle mine demoner), short stories, 2016 Dark Branches (Mørke grener), novel, 2013 You Were So Deeply Loved (Så høyt var du elsket), novel, 2011 I Will Show You Fear (Jeg skal vise dere frykten), novel, 2008 Theory and Practice (Teori og praksis), novel, 2004 The Bashful Pornographer (Den sjenerte pornografen), novel, 1999 De Sade’s Valet (Latours katalog), novel, 1996

Theory and Practice (Teori og praksis), 2004

De Sade’s Valet (Latours katalog), 1996

Theory and Practice is a mendacious autobiography about growing up in the suburb of Rykkinn, outside of Oslo. It is the not-quite-true story of Nikolaj, son of an architect, and his family, who move into his father’s idea of paradise (at least in theory) in 1972. It is a novel that goes beyond the limits of realism, blurring the boundaries between fiction and reality, raising the question of whether it is possible to be consistently truthful when writing about one’s own life, or whether falsehood is, in the last instance, the most honest approach.

Latour, the son of a much hated moneylender, is born without the capacity for feeling pain, which precipitates his passionate interest in anatomy. When his mother dies, he finds a list of names he believes to be people responsible for her death. Later he goes into faithful service for the Marquis de Sade. As accomplice to de Sade’s libertine activities, Latour combines revenge for his mother’s death with a remorseless search for the center of pain in the human brain.

PHOTO: CHRISTIAN ELGVIN

PHOTO: AMNE VALEUR

Fiction

Jan Grue Jan Grue (1981–) is a writer of fiction, short fiction, non-fiction and children’s books, whose works are characterized by wit, intelligence and curiosity.

BORN AND living in Oslo, Grue has studied film and has a PhD in linguistics. Besides his writing he is currently a professor in Qualitative Methodology at the Institute for Special Needs Education at the University of Oslo. He has also worked as a columnist and book reviewer for the Norwegian newspaper Klassekampen, been the editor of the Norwegian film magazine Z, and has published a number of articles in various newspapers and periodicals. He made his literary debut in 2010 with the short story collection Everything Under Control, which was praised by the critics. It was followed up by three more collections of short stories, as well as several non-fiction works and books for children. In 2016 he made his debut as a novelist with It Can’t Get Any Better. Among his non-fiction work one finds Body Language, an analysis of how the physically disabled are portrayed

from a cultural and social-analytical perspective. In 2013 his three short story collections were published in a single volume edition. As a writer, Grue draws on all his qualifications. His prose is by turns academic, funny, always sharp and poignant, while still maintaining a certain lyricism. Creative and sensitive, he has a large repertoire, culminating in elegant movements and stylistic crossovers.

His prose is by turns academic, funny, always sharp and poignant, while still maintaining a certain lyricism. Creative and sensitive, he has a large repertoire, culminating in elegant movements and stylistic crossovers.

Selected titles It Can’t Get Any Better (Det blir ikke bedre), novel, 2016 Super-Magnus, children’s book, 2016 Vermin (Skadedyr), children’s book, 2015 Normalia, short stories, 2015 Body Language (Kroppsspråk), non-fiction, 2014 It Could Have Been Different (Det kunne vært annerledes), collected short stories, 2013 Body and Mind (Kropp og sinn), short stories, 2012 Oliver, childrens’s book, 2012 Indefinite Time (Ubestemt tid), short stories, 2011 Everything Under Control (Alt under kontroll), short stories, 2010

Everything Under Control (Alt under kontroll), 2010

It Can’t Get Any Better (Det blir ikke bedre), 2016

Everything can change: Oslo could become a city of canals, Star Wars could become a world religion and the movie Casablanca could be changed again and again until it re-emerges in hundreds of different versions. Focusing on the limitations and possible transgressions of modern control regimes, These short stories could be termed metamorphoses for a change that has yet to appear. However, they dig deeper, addressing the relationship between fact and fiction, technology and humanity. Written in a variety of styles, this collection includes stories about super heroes, cyborgs, best-selling authors and school massacres, about the philosophy of consciousness, of dreamlife and disturbing ducks.

August Wilhelmsen has a solid family background, is talented and ambitious, and holds an exciting job in the accounts department of the Ministry of Industry and Health. With a beautiful partner and a dream of perfection and of being worthy, he is all set for a good life. Jan Grue has written a novel about tomorrow’s society, and thus also about Norway of today. A society governed by the concept of profitability and the will to do good, by the belief that everything is measurable ... even the value of life.

Fiction

The day begins. The day begins.

Nothing to be done. Nothing, not about it, not about anything, not about that either. That’s worst of all, not a single morning without this allencompassing disappointment: yet another day. And every single time, so help me God, it has to start all over again from the beginning. It never just picks up where when it left off last time, a Tuesday that keeps being Tuesday until the snows come, but the whole thing starting all over again, plodding and without exception, every twenty-four hours, to the minute and second, like a self-satisfied, smart-alecky child trying to impress someone with his abnormal sense of punctuality. At the very least there could have been some experimentation with a week that was twice as long. Then if nothing else at least there wouldn’t have to be one Monday after another right in your face. The day and week have only just been there when here they come again, identical and with that same mediocre quality, delivered right to your door, shoved through the mail slot, tossed in open windows, plunking down the pipe, shoved down your throat, down your gullet, like a subscription you just can’t cancel and that the company responsible for can’t fathom that someone would rather do without. Daybreak over Minneapolis/St. Paul. It seems like it’s going to be a nice day, that’s how it looks, not a cloud in the sky yet. But it’s not really definite, the weather is often nicer in the hours before sun up, clearer, milder, and nicer; I bet there’s a meteorological explanation for it, I could have asked someone about it and found out, but then I’d be afraid the person would shake their head, set their pages of analyses and weather forecasts aside and smile bravely as he said: Morning weather? It’s only like that so we can bear to put up with one more day.

Johan Harstad Max, Mischa and the Tet Offensive (Max, Mischa & Tetoffensiven)

Fiction

Jonny Halberg Jonny Halberg (1962–) is one of the major contributors to Norwegian dirty realism.

BORN IN Jørstadmoen, Halberg made his debut in 1989 with Transition to Tertiary, a collection of intense short stories that were praised for their sharp observations and distinct style. His proper breakthrough as an author came with the novel The Flood (2000), a modern family saga of love, loss, and longing, examining the divide between modern day rural and urban societies – a book for which he received several literary awards. Other central works include Defiance (1996), the haunting story of a family falling apart; Go to the Mountain (2004), where urban development has hit the rural small towns seen in The Flood and Defiance; and The Twin (2010), a story of brotherhood and guilt. His prose is concise, clear and unembellished. Halberg often

writes of rural landscapes and rugged loners, with characters tormented by pent-up feelings, sometimes breaking out in aggressive behavior. He depicts them, however, with warmth and sympathy, never compromising them. Of Defiance, the newspaper Dagens Næringsliv wrote: “Halberg’s characters are both angelic and demonic – they seize the day in blissful intoxication, and tumble just as quickly toward the dizzying abyss.” In addition to his work as an author, he is also a critic for the newspaper Morgenbladet, and he is one of the founders and organizers of the Møllebyen Literature Festival in Moss, a festival with an international reach. Jonny Halberg now lives in Moss in southeastern Norway.

Awards 2001: Språklig samlings litteraturpris 2000: Kritikerprisen, Oslo-prisen, P2-lytternes romanpris 1998: Sultprisen

Selected itles North of the Church. Stories 1994-2016 (Like nord for kirka), short stories, 2016 1983, novel, 2012 A Norwegian Tragedy (En norsk tragedie), novel, 2010 The Twin (Tvillingen), novel, 2006 Go to the Mountain (Gå til fjellet), novel, 2004 A Time of Innocence (En uskyldig tid), novel, 2002 The Flood (Flommen), novel, 2000 Junk Mail (Budbringeren), film script, 1998 Going Down (Gå under), short stories, 1992 Transition to Tertiary (Overgang til tertiær), short stories, 1989

The Twin (Tvillingen), 2006

The Flood (Flommen), 2000

After spending years as an unsuccessful financier, Adam Egeberg returns to his childhood home to find his mother disappeared and his brother, who is disabled, in shock. Weighed down by guilt over his years of absence, he leaves for Straume, the village of his father’s family, and takes his brother along with him. Straume at first seems like a real backwater in the river of time, but appearances can be deceptive. The path on which the two brothers now embark takes them on an edifying journey to the past. As in all of Halberg’s books, the past catches up with people when they least expect it, and Adam is forced to make choices that he has avoided all his life.

The Flood is a modern family saga, set at a farm near a river in rural Norway. As the river rises, so does the tension in a family forced to break out of its habits. Driven from the farm to a bigger city, they experience that no-one there wants to have anything to do with them, and the police officer intent on helping them keeps doing the opposite. A story of loss, pride and folly, The Flood examines the forces of nature, inside as well as around us. As the floodwater rises, some secrets are submerged, others are revealed. Can the flood, in spite of its destructiveness, bring cleansing and a hope of new beginnings?

PHOTO: ROLF M. AAGAARD

His prose is concise, clear and unembellished. Halberg often writes of rural landscapes and rugged loners, with characters tormented by pent-up feelings, sometimes breaking out in aggressive behavior. He depicts them, however, with warmth and sympathy, never compromising them.

With his unique, atmospheric prose, particular sense of absurd humor and masterfully composed plots, he sees human fates in modern reality in a way that is both urgent and refined.

PHOTO: LARS MYHREN HOLAND

Fiction

Johan Harstad Johan Harstad (1979– ), novelist, playwright and writer of short stories and short prose, offers a wholly original voice, and is one of the most striking literary talents of his generation. HE MADE his literary debut in 2001 at 22 years old with the short prose collection From Here On You Just Grow Older. His 2002 short story collection Ambulance was exceedingly well received, and was translated into French and Finnish. His proper breakthrough came in 2005, with the massive novel Buzz Aldrin – What Happened to You in All the Confusion?, an absorbing tale of being loved, of being invisible, of choosing to be second best, and thus forgotten about. 2007’s Hässelby is about the life and demons of a grown-up Alfie Atkins, the beloved Swedish children’s book character, and explores growing up in suburbia knowing you’ll never escape. After gaining attention as an outstanding novelist and author of short prose and short stories, Harstad turned to plays, four of which are collected in B-sides (2008). In 2009, he was employed

as the first in-house playwright at the National Theatre, resulting in the play Etc. An extensive work on genocides, brutally merciless and almost exhausting, it is also beautiful and, in glimpses, surprisingly humorous. According to Harstad it is “simply the most aggressive thing I have ever written.” His 2015 novel Max, Mischa & the Tet Offensive, a staggering 1100 pages long, manifests his position as a force to be reckoned with. With his unique, atmospheric prose, particular sense of absurd humor and masterfully composed plots, he sees human fates in modern reality in a way that is both urgent and refined. Offering complete involvement, he sets forth characters – often slightly marginalized, often by their own choice – that seem like flesh-and-blood people: vulnerable, lonely, different, human. Harstad lives in Oslo.

Max, Mischa and the Tet Offensive (Max, Mischa & Tetoffensiven), 2015 This is an expansive novel about art and homesickness; about the applicability of Vietnamese guerilla warfare in everyday life, about those who have been to war and those who protested against it; about generic library music, hyperrealist paintings of washing machines and girls who look like Shelley Duvall; about complicated productions of openended plays and films; about growing up with communist parents, about growing up at all; about love and friendship and hard work; about the sun’s glare on Fire Island and a workprint copy of Apocalypse Now. And it is about the big question anyone who has ever left home has to ask himself: How long can you be gone for before it is too late to go back?

Selected awards 2017: Sultprisen 2014: Ibsenprisen 2012: Osloprisen 2010: Wesselprisen 2008: Brageprisen 2007: Ungdommens kritikerpris 2003: Bjørnson-stipendet, Årets Stavanger-kunstner

Selected titles Max, Mischa & the Tet Offensive (Max, Mischa & Tetoffensiven), novel, 2015 Motorpsycho “Blissard”, non-fiction, 2012 Etc. (Osv), play, 2010 B-sides (Bsider), four plays, 2008 Darlah, youth novel, 2008 Hässelby, novel, 2007 Buzz Aldrin – What Happened to You in All the Confusion? (Buzz Aldrin, hvor ble det av deg i alt mylderet?), novel, 2005 Ambulance (Ambulanse), short stories, 2002 From Here on You Just Grow Older (Herfra blir du bare eldre), short stories, 2001

Buzz Aldrin–What Happened to You In All the Confusion? (Buzz Aldrin, hvor ble det av deg i alt mylderet?), 2005 Mattias was born on the night of the moon landing in 1969. In love with his job as a gardener and his girlfriend of almost 13 years, his greatest wish is to stay put, not to get in anyone’s way. When his friend gets a job as a musician on the Faroe Islands, he reluctantly agrees to go along as a soundman. According to the plan, he will be back home in a week. But Mattis will not go home for a long time. First, he will almost disappear.

Fiction

Levi Henriksen Levi Henriksen (1964–) is an award-winning author of short stories and novels, with a wide and loyal readership.

BORN JUST outside Kongsvinger, a small town that appears in much of his work, Henriksen was a journalist for many years on a local newspaper before becoming a full time author. He also plays the bass guitar in his own band, Babylon Badlands, writing song lyrics and composing. When his first short story collection, Fever, was published in 2002, Henriksen immediately captured the public’s attention with his distinct and charismatic style. Fever was followed up in 2003 by Down, Down, Down, a further selection of short stories. His breakthrough came in 2004 with his novel Snow Will Fall on Fallen Snow, which became a bestseller and was awarded The Booksellers’ Prize as well as being selected for recommendation by one of Norway’s major book clubs. Henriksen’s trademark is a capacity for combining a strong, at times aggressive voice with a fine-tuned

vulnerability. His works are mainly set in a tough, unsentimental, rural environment, which sits uncomfortably on the edges of contemporary urban life: a place where old and new values clash, and where men struggle with contemporary, urban demands on their masculinity. In 2010, the prize-winning director Bent Hamer released a feature film based on Nothing but Soft Presents for Christmas, which was critically acclaimed and reached a wide audience. Many of Henriksen’s books are translated and published abroad, most recently in Italy.

Henriksen’s trademark is a capacity for combining a strong, at times aggressive voice with a fine-tuned vulnerability.

Here, Amongst the Living (Her hos de levende), 2017 The house that Hermann Henriksen built with his own hands has been sold and is going to be torn down. It was he who worked for years in the forest, he who flew the farthest at the skijump. And it was he who, when he was young man, plans made to kill his stepfather. Who was he, really? Hermann’s son has come to a turning point in his life. He has broken off contact with his immediate family and entered the old and abandoned house that his father built. He knows little about his father’s upbringing and dark past. With two old landscape paintings and a surviving personal organizer, he tries to mend the ruptures in his father’s life, and to salvage the scraps of his own.

Awards 2007: Hedmark fylkeskommunes kulturpris 2006: Ordknappen 2004: Bokhandlerprisen, Kongsvinger kommunes kulturpris

Selected titles Here, Amongst the Living (Her hos de levende), novel, 2017 Harp Song (Harpesang), novel, 2014 The Day Will Come With a Blue Wind (Dagen skal komme med blå vind), novel, 2011 Dearest, My Dearest (Kjære deg min kjære), poems, 2010 Everything Close to My Heart (Alt det som lå meg på hjertet), short stories, 2009 East of the Rain (Like østenfor regnet), novel, 2008 Babylon Badlands, novel, 2006 Nothing but Soft Presents for Christmas (Bare mjuke pakker under treet), short stories, 2005 Snow Will Fall on Fallen Snow (Snø vil falle over snø som har falt), novel, 2004 Down, Down, Down (Ned ned ned), short stories, 2003 Fever (Feber), short stories, 2002

Snow Will Fall on Fallen Snow (Snø vil falle over snø som har falt), 2004 Following the unexpected death of his brother, Dan Kaspersen decides to sell the family farm and escape. But after a restless night in his freezing childhood home, Mona Steinmyra appears, with a smile that becomes the first thing in a long time to anchor him, to make him want to stay. With an unforgettable combination of eccentricity and indifference, Dan digs his heels in, refusing to let go of his life, as he knew it, for a little while longer. Hysterically funny, engaging and intense.

PHOTO: ROLF M. AAGAARD

PHOTO: TOM SANDBERG

HerbjĂ¸rnsrudâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s prose is something entirely of its own: bafflingly creative and evocative, he bends and twists and saturates the language with nuances, until it assumes almost a tactile quality, the tableaux he sets forth clinging to the skin of his readers.

Fiction

Hans Herbjørnsrud Prize-winning author Hans Herbjørnsrud (1938–) is regarded as one of our foremost short story writers, especially excelling with the extended stories, pushing the boundaries of the genre. BORN AND raised in Heddal in inland Norway, Herbjørnsrud made his literary debut with the short story collection Witnesses in 1979, 41 years old. In his own words, moving back to the family farm unlocked the author within him. His oeuvre is securely rooted in the landscapes of Telemark, the homely tinged with the uncanny, often hauntingly so. His debut, exploring themes such as trauma, identity and religion, gained attention, and earned him Tarjei Vesaas’ Debut Prize. Having had a relatively small, but devoted readership for years, the 1997 collection The Blind Door – for which he was nominated for both the Brage Prize and the Nordic Council’s Literature Prize, while he received the Critic’s Prize – marked his breakthrough. With only seven works, his output is not expansive, but is remarkably consistent in its high quality. Alongside Kjell Askildsen,

Herbjørnsrud has repeatedly been named the most original, significant and influential Norwegian short story writer of his generation. Morgenbladet wrote: “In Herbjørnsrud’s region […] linguistic exuberance rules, filling the stories with magical realism, hallucinatory energy and a traumatic past that is always stirring uneasily just below the turf”. Herbjørnsrud’s prose is something entirely of its own: bafflingly creative and evocative, he bends and twists and saturates the language with nuances, until it assumes almost a tactile quality, the tableaux he sets forth clinging to the skin of his readers. Balancing the rational and the incomprehensible, his texts thematise our split selves, and have the long shadows of trauma – in the lives of individuals, or in the history of humanity – reaching all the way deep into the Norwegian woods.

Awards and nominations 2005: Aschehougprisen, Doblougprisen 2002: Nordisk Råds litteraturpris (nominated) 1999: Aristeion-prisen (Europe, nominated) 1998: Nordisk Råds litteraturpris (nominated) 1997: Kritikerprisen 1987: Gyldendals legat 1980: Tarjei Vesaas’ debutantpris

Titles The Wells (Brønnene), short stories, 2006 We Know So Much (Vi vet så mye), short stories, 2001 The Blind Door (Blinddøra), short stories, 1997 Ex and Zed (Eks og Sett), short stories, 1992 He (Han), short stories, 1987 The Water Carrier (Vannbæreren), short stories, 1984 Witnesses (Vitner), short stories, 1979

We Know So Much (Vi vet så mye), 2001

The Blind Door (Blinddøra), 1997

Creativity and creation are among the themes that Herbjørnsrud addresses in this collection. The 70-page title story is about a farmer who is also a writer, his neighbor who is also an sculptor, and the atrocity in their midst – one that the farmers dare not and will not acknowledge, but the artists cannot ignore. A gut-wrenching exploration of identity, history and the darkest corners of humanity, it leaves the reader shaken to the core.

In the three stories in The Blind Door, Herbjørnsrud explores secrets that leave a trace of something eerie and unexplained, even after they are exposed.

“Herbjørnsrud’s sixth and latest book, We Know So Much, is possibly his most grotesque and baroque so far. The prose is significantly more experimental and the story far less plotdriven than in the previous books. Thereby, it is also far more disturbing” – Dagens Nyheter, Sweden

“With The Blind Door, he outdoes himself. These three short stories are nothing short of a sublime take on the art of storytelling […] as a critic, one is advised to avoid being panegyric, using clichés and overused metaphors. But I can’t help myself. Herbjørnsrud has hit the bull’s eye! Three home runs!” – Øystein Rottem, Dagbladet

Fiction

Heidi Linde Heidi Linde (1973–) is a hugely talented writer, and writes warm yet vivid prose about characters that touch the heart.

BORN IN Asker, Linde has degrees in creative writing and writing for the screen, and made her literary debut with the 1998 children’s book Mosquito Bites. She was declared a rising star as soon as her first novel for adults, Under the Table (2002), made it to the main selection in Norway’s major book club. Her big breakthrough came with her third novel, Yes, We Can! (2011), which received fantastic reviews and sold more than 25,000 copies in Norway. Her last novel, This is Norway (2015), was also extremely well received. She has written seven novels, as well as ten novels for children and young adults, many of them translated and published abroad. She has also written plays for the radio, winning a Nordic competition for radio plays in Helsinki in 2008 with the play Schmokk. Effortlessly shifting between the humorous and the sober, Linde

directs her sharp, but not unforgiving gaze towards the predicament both of individuals and contemporary Norwegian society as a whole. She is also a plot-driven female writer who has traversed the gender gap: read by men and women alike, the critics compare her to giants like Nick Hornby and Jonathan Frantzen – a feat that is still, unfortunately, rarer than what one would think.

Effortlessly shifting between the humorous and the sober, Linde directs her sharp, but not unforgiving gaze towards the predicament both of individuals and contemporary Norwegian society as a whole.

Selected titles Numbered Days (Talte dager), novel, 2017 This is Norway (Norsk sokkel), novel, 2015 Agnes in Bed (Agnes i senga), novel, 2012 Pym Petterson’s Disastrous Family (Pym Pettersons mislykka familie), children’s book, 2012 Pym Petterson’s Disastrous School Trip (Pym Pettersons mislykka skoletur), children’s book, 2011 Yes, We Can (Nu, jävlar), novel, 2011 For the Rest of Your Life (Resten av livet), with her sister, Ellen, novel, 2007 Schmokk, play, 2007 Lies! (Jug!) children’s book, 2005 Gaudy Finery (Juggel), novel, 2004 Under the Table (Under bordet), novel, 2002

Yes, We Can! (Nu, jävlar), 2011

Numbered Days (Talte dager), 2017

A novel about baking, Metallica, morning sickness and the football World Cup – but primarily about people it is impossible not to fall in love with.

Liv Karin is losing her mind about Kaja, her teenage daughter, without knowing that the ugly words between them will be their last. With great warmth and insight into human emotions, Linde depicts Kaja’s last four days through an array of stories and fates.

Obama’s slogan ”change we can believe in” reverberated far outside the borders of the US. Even in a small town in Eastern Norway, Terese thought that it was high time for some change. But now, as she waddles about in the final stages of pregnancy, she is unsure whether this is the change she needed. We encounter Kevin, who has suffered from a broken heart for twelve years, Lydia and her imaginary friend Queen Sonja, and Jessica, who is coming home to attend her own wedding … to a man she no longer knows if she ought to marry.

Numbered days is a book about the kindness and mercy in the relationships we build our lives upon, and about how tiny things can have unimaginable consequences. Before we know it, it is too late to apologize.

PHOTO: JO MICHAEL

PHOTO: MORTEN BRUN

Fiction

Øystein Lønn Øystein Lønn (1936–), writer of novels and short stories, and an unrivaled master of ambiguous dialogue, was for a long time Norway’s best-kept literary secret.

BORN IN Kristiansand, Øystein Lønn made his literary debut in 1966, and was for many years an author’s author, a favorite among the literary critics. However, Thrane’s Method from 1993 marked his breakthrough in a larger context. Awarded the Critics’ Prize as well as the Brage Prize, it finally earned Lønn a wider audience. His 1996 follow-up, the short story collection What Should We Do Today?, was awarded the Nordic Council’s Literature Prize – the Nordic region’s most prestigious literary prize. Lønn’s prose is clean, concise and stylistically sober. Although unembellished, devoid of idiomatic expressions, his writing is nuanced and layered, full of double meanings. Long dialogues, at

once simple and mysterious, are characteristic to Lønn’s works. A main theme in Lønn’s oeuvre are the ways in which we manage our small private lives within complex societal processes. In his later publications, these issues are dramatized in step with the disintegration of the welfare state, where most people are confronted with a new and insecure way of life, one they have no language for.

Awards

A main theme in Lønn’s oeuvre are the ways in which we manage our small private lives within complex societal processes.

What Shall We Do Today? (Hva skal vi gjøre i dag?), short stories, 1995

1996: Nordisk Råds litteraturpris 1993: Kritikerprisen, Brageprisen 1992: Doblougprisen 1988: Gyldendals legat

Selected titles The Refugee’s Inevitable Impasse (Fluktens nødvendige blindveier), novel, 2016 According to Sofia (Ifølge Sofia), novel, 2001 The Necessary Rituals of Maren Gripe (Maren Gripes nødvendige ritualer), novel, 1999

Thrane’s Method (Thranes metode), short stories, 1993 Thomas Ribe’s Fifth Case (Thomas Ribes femte sak), novel, 1991 Tom Reber’s Last Retreat (Tom Rebers siste retrett), novel, 1988 Hirtshals Hirtshals, novel, 1975 The Procession (Prosesjonen), short stories, 1966 The Continents (Kontinentene), novel, 1967

The Necessary Rituals of Maren Gripe (Maren Gripes nødvendige ritualer), 1999

What Shall We Do Today? (Hva skal vi gjøre i dag?), 1995

The action of this unusual and fascinating novel plays out on an island on the southwestern coast of Norway, sometime in the first part of the twentieth century, while sailing ships are still arriving at the harbor. This is the home of Maren Gripe. A beautiful woman, Maren turns heads wherever she goes, but when she, one night, falls madly in love with a foreign sailor, he does not seem to see her at all, driving Maren crazy – at least, that is what people make of it. When several official persons try to recapitulate the events of this night afterwards, they get very different reports. Who holds the truth, can it ever be captured, pinned down? Brilliant and cinematic, this is a novel of vivid landscapes and strong undertows of passion and madness.

Øystein Lønn has a unique ability to portray the hidden drama behind events that, to all appearances, are common and mundane. In these nine short stories he discloses the lust, angst, dreams and joy of life that lie just below the surface. Most of the stories deal with relationships and intimacy, the sensual and the unspoken filtered through an atmosphere of summer heat or snowdrifts and frost mist, making the stories leave lasting impressions long after the last page has been turned.

Fiction

Trude Marstein Trude Marstein (1973–), writer and essayist, has been noted for her sharp observations, acute precision and mastery of language.

BORN AND raised in Tønsberg, Marstein studied pedagogy, psychology and literature at the University of Oslo before studying creative writing at the University College of Southeast Norway. She made her literary debut in 1998 with the short story collection Strong Hunger, Sudden Nausea, for which she was awarded the prestigious Tarjei Vesaas’ debut prize. She has since written novels, essays and a children’s book, and received several literary awards. In her books, she has succeeded in exposing the gaps between the love, affection and closeness that we long and wish for with other human beings, and all the trivial, forbidden and unwanted emotions that exist, just below the surface, in us all. When Marstein was awarded Kritikerprisen (The Critics’ Prize)

for her novel Doing Good in 2006, she was praised for her keen eye and unpretentious narrative voice, both being key qualities in her established oeuvre.

Awards 2007: P.O. Enquists pris 2006: Kritikerprisen 2004: Doblougprisen, 2002: Sult-prisen, Vestfolds litteraturpris 1998: Tarjei Vesaas’ debutantpris

In her books, she has succeeded in exposing the gaps between the love, affection and closeness that we long and wish for with other human beings, and all the trivial, forbidden and unwanted emotions that exist, just below the surface, in us all.

Selected titles Home to Me (Hjem til meg), novel, 2012 Nothing to Regret (Ingenting å angre på), novel, 2009 Doing Good (Gjøre godt), novel, 2006 Construction and Sincerity (Konstruksjon og inderlighet), essays, 2004 Elin and Hans (Elin og Hans), novel, 2002 Suddenly Hearing Someone Open a Door (Plutselig høre noen åpne en dør), novel, 2000 Strong Hunger, Sudden Nausea (Sterk sult, plutselig kvalme), short stories, 1998

Doing Good (Gjøre godt), 2006

Home to Me (Hjem til meg), 2012

In Doing Good, a single weekend in July in a regular Norwegian town constitutes the framework for a narrative as dazzling as it is daring, weaving together no less than 118 narrative voices; young and old, men and women; some arriving, leaving or passing through, some never having been elsewhere. People trying their best, going through fundamental changes. Shifting effortlessly from narrator to narrator, this novel deals with themes such as passion and death, work and escape, drunkenness and reconciliation, bewilderment and reflection. It is a novel about everything that life might throw at us, and our ability as people to deal with it – and, ultimately, how we struggle to do good.

Unfaithful when he is 33 years old, still unfaithful at 62, Ove cheats on his first wife with the woman who will become his second wife, and then cheats on her, too. He drifts from affair to affair, from woman to woman; leaving his kind, wise and stable Wenche for the temperamental actress Marion, and then moving on to other, younger women still. And he is serious about it, every single time, every time he sees opportunities, every time he thinks he can handle things without hurting anyone.

“From this exceedingly broad perspective rises a picture of the banality, the randomness, the tragedy and the beauty of the lives of people existing within each other’s proximity; of how they – on purpose or against their better judgement – happen to affect one another.” – NRK P2

“A ruthless, impressive novel about a man who seeks affirmation and dreams of genuine contact, but constantly ends up in a dead end.” – Dagens Næringsliv

PHOTO: ROLF M. AAGAARD

A perfectly unique writer. Who can she be compared to? Nobody ... She is the rare kind of writer who is able to minimize herself, to step aside in order to let her talent, her story, her characters, her material, her infinitely finely-tuned devices shine, thereby giving her direct access to the most heartbreaking human beings. â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Kristeligt Dagblad, Denmark PHOTO: HANS FREDRIK ASBJĂ&#x2DC;RNSEN

Fiction

Ingvild Hedemann Rishøi One of the most admired and acclaimed writers of her generation, Ingvild H. Rishøi (1978–) made her debut in 2007 with the short story collection Do Not Erase.

IN 2010 another collection, The Story of Mrs. Berg followed, and was shortlisted for the Brage Prize. In 2013 she won the prestigious Swedish P.O. Enquist Prize. She has also won the Hunger Prize and the Unified Norwegian Language Prize. For her latest book, Winter Stories, Rishøi has received praise from both the public and the press. Though the number of short stories in this collection are fewer than her previous ones, this containing only three, the critics agree that she has developed her unique touch for the lives of vulnerable people even further. The book won the Critics’ Prize for best adult fiction as well as the Brage Prize for best

work of short fiction. It was also nominated in the Brage adult fiction category. It was the first time ever a book had been nominated in two categories. According to the jury of the P.O. Enquist Prize, “Ingvild Hedemann Rishøi’s short stories enrich the genre. Through her great knowledge of human nature and delicate balance between empathy and sensitivity, she draws close to her protagonists. The result is both heartbreaking and melancholic – but also somewhat absurd, with a twinkle in the eye. A truly original and distinctive writer.” Rishøi has also written two acclaimed picture books for children.

Awards 2015: Bokbloggerprisen 2014: Kritikerprisen, Brageprisen 2013: P.O. Enquist Litteraturpris 2012: Sultprisen 2011: Språklig samlings litteraturpris

Selected titles Winter Stories (Vinternoveller), short stories, 2014 The Story of Mrs. Berg (Historien om Fru Berg), short stories, 2011 Do Not Erase (La stå), short stories, 2007

Winter Stories (Vinternoveller), 2014

The Story of Mrs. Berg (Historien om Fru Berg), 2011

It is impossible to remain untouched by Ingvild Rishøi’s writing. No writer produces better depictions of the vulnerability and fragility of humankind, of how unpredictable a grey everyday life can be. Her short stories have the capacity to deeply move a reader without compromising any of their literary quality or psychological depth. Winter Stories are about fleeing on a train, about karaoke, shopping malls and snow, and about how immensely difficult buying a pillow can be. But first and foremost, Winter Stories are three tales of love. Three stories about people who mean well, who do their best, but don’t always succeed.

With great empathy and unique literary force, Ingvild H. Rishøi describes the fragility of human relations: the enigmatic, the frightening and the beautiful. The stories are about meeting one’s first mistress, about being clairvoyant and seeing signs, and about discovering that you and Janis Joplin are utterly alike. They are about believing in fate, fireflies and card games. And about loving a hamster named Mrs. Berg.

Fiction

Gunnar Staalesen A new crime novel from the pen of Gunnar Staalesen (1947–) is always an event in Norway, where he is one of the absolute masters of the genre.

STAALESEN WAS born in Bergen, where he studied English and French language and literature, in addition to comparative literature. He made his literary debut with the novel Times of Innocence in 1969, only 22 years old. His output includes novels, plays and children’s books, and his 1997–2000 epic High Noon trilogy, a vivid and broadcanvas vision of the city of Bergen during the 20th century, portraying 100 years of history through a multitude of plotlines, was extremely successful – it was later dramatized (by the author) and staged at Den Nationale Scene in Bergen. However, he is first and foremost known and loved for his crime novels. Sharp, clever and unpredictable, writing a crisp and precise prose, Staalesen constructs plots that keep his readers enthralled from the very first page.

His first crime story, a police novel titled Side by Side, Two in a Bind, was published in 1975, and won him the Riverton Prize, the most prestigious Norwegian award for crime fiction – a considerable feat. After the publication of three more police novels, he set out to explore the possibilities of the private eye genre, creating the beloved private investigator Varg Veum, a rough Bergener figuring in 18 crime novels and several short stories. Staalesen’s excellency as a crime writer was solidly confirmed when his 2002 crime novel Reflections in a Mirror, the first Varg Veum novel in seven years, won him the Riverton Prize for the second time. Several titles in the Varg Veum series have been adapted for the cinema, and his books have frequently featured as Book of the Month in Norway’s biggest book club.

Selected awards 2015: Svenska Deckarakademins æresbevisning 2012: Rivertonkklubbens ærespris 2003: Bergen Kommunes hederspris for kultur 2002: Rivertonprisen 1991: Kaliberprisen (Sweden) 1990: Palle Rosenkrantz-prisen (Denmark) 1989: Gyldendals legat, Bokhandlerprisen 1975: Rivertonprisen

Selected titles Big Sister (Storesøster), crime novel, 2016 Where Roses Never Die (Der hvor roser aldri dør), crime novel, 2012 We shall Inherit the Wind (Vi skal arve vinden), crime novel, 2010 Cold Hearts (Kalde hjerter), crime novel, 2008 Reflections in a Mirror (Som i et speil), crime novel, 2002 The High Noon Trilogy (Morgenrødtrilogien), novels, 1997–2000 Bitter Blooms (Bitre blomster), crime novel, 1991 Fallen Angels (Falne engler), crime novel, 1989

The Varg Veum series 1977–XXXX Varg Veum first turned up in the 1977 novel The Fox Takes the Goose, the first of 18 novels so far that has won over a massive audience of readers, crowning his creator a king of crime stories. Staalesen’s simple idea was to create a crime noire private investigator, located in Bergen – under the Nordic light – and weave in social criticism. It was a success from the very first novel. Varg Veum steps forward as a ‘68 generation idealist: a di-

vorced, slightly alcoholic ex-social worker well versed in life’s darker side. Behind his rough exterior and sharp verbal sallies, both typical genre markers, hides a warm-hearted and sensitive person with a strongly developed social conscience and an unflagging solidarity with the common people. The books about Varg Veum are published in several countries, among them the UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain and Russia,

and many of them have been adapted – six radio dramas and 12 feature films are based on his novels. “This series stands alongside Connelly, Crais, Temple, Camilleri and others, who are among the very best modern exponents of the poetic yet tough detective story with strong, classic plots; a social conscience; and perfect pitch in terms of a sense of place.” – Euro Crime

Sharp, clever and unpredictable, writing a crisp and precise prose, Staalesen constructs plots that keep his readers enthralled from the very first page.

PHOTO: HELGE SKODVIN

PHOTO: JO MICHAEL

Sundeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s style is marked by numerous digressions, surprising associations, interposed dialogues cut short, and minutely detailed meditations on the described surroundings. It makes for a challenging read, but it gives back tenfold

Fiction

Ole Robert Sunde Ole Robert Sunde (1952–), poet, essayist, novelist and writer of short stories, has a marvelously keen eye for the smallest, most humble things and phenomena that surround us in our everyday lives. SUNDE, BORN in Kristiansand, debuted in 1982 with the poetry collection On Your Heels and has since developed a body of work that, through various genres, forms a remarkable, intricate whole. Though he made his debut as a poet, it is as an experimental and innovative writer of prose and essays that he has really won acclaim. Over the years, Sunde has become solidly established as one of the most significant and original voices in Norwegian contemporary literature. Characterized by long, meandering sentences – 1992’s Of Course She Had to Call taking it to the extreme of having only one single punctuation mark – Sunde’s style is marked by numerous digressions, surprising associations, interposed dialogues cut short, and minutely detailed meditations on the described surroundings. It

makes for a challenging read, but it gives back tenfold: these trains of thought are at the same time immensely wise and refreshingly new and different. The Danish magazine Atlas wrote: “Read Sunde. Read him for his texts’ stylistic supremacy, their ability to seduce the readers and render them perplexed […] read them for their deep humanity and love for a mystifying, frustrating world”. A recurring point of departure is the author’s study in Therese’s street in Oslo; the circumference drawn from it has a range in both time and space that makes room for a wealth of themes. Autobiographical material is combined with reflections on major historical topics, while bringing together conceptual elements from ancient as well as modern art and from philosophy. Thus, the story of the individual is set in play with history at large.

Awards and nominations 2015: Doblougprisen 2012: Nordisk Råds litteraturpris (nominated) 2007: Gyldendalprisen 2001: Aschehougprisen

Selected titles Penelope Is Ill (Penelope er syk), novel, 2017 An Endless World (Verden uten ende), essays, 2014 The War Was My Family’s Story (Krigen var min families historie), novel, 2012 Self Compassion (Selvomsorg), prose, 2010 I Am Like an Open Book (Jeg er som en åpen bok), novel, 2005 The Sleeping Voice (Den sovende stemmen), novel, 1999 All the World’s Little Things (All verdens småting), prose, 1996 Of Course She Had to Call (Naturligvis måtte hun ringe), novel, 1992 From This Point I Draw a Circumference (Fra dette punktet trekker jeg en omkrets), poems, 1983 On Your Heels (Hakk i hæl), poems, 1982

Penelope Is Ill (Penelope er syk), 2017 Thereses gate is a city street like many others in the capital, with small shops and old rental apartments. In one of these apartments lives an author and his wife. She is ill, seriously ill, and the author has gone out to buy her something tempting to eat. But the route is filled with interruptions and disturbances: A cyclops is trying to slow him down; someone is shouting from a balcony; acquaintances are out for a walk. While the author is constantly thinking about his wife and her condition, his gaze is drawn in all directions and his concentration abandons him. What would be a short walk with a simple aim becomes an apparently perpetual odyssey up and down Therese’s St, while Penelope is ill and waiting at home.

The War Was My Family’s Story (Krigen var min families historie), 2012 With a grandfather who fought in the trenches during the Great War, a mother who lived through the Blitz and a father who fought on the beaches of Normandy, war is a constant presence in the narrator’s life. The War was My Family’s Story is a narrative about fathers and sons, about rebelling against authority, about a family’s open and hidden stories, about reconciliation – and about final farewells. Like any Ole Robert Sunde novel it is also a book full of associations and leaps of thought, deeply serious and wildly expansive.

Fiction

Helene Uri Helene Uri (1964–), author and linguist, explores interpersonal relationships with great accuracy.

BORN IN Stockholm, Uri holds a PhD in linguistics, and worked as an Associate Professor at the University of Oslo for twelve years before leaving to become a full time writer of fiction. She made her literary debut in 1995 with a youth novel, Anna on a Friday, and published her first novel for adults, Deep Red 315, in 2001. Honey Tongues was published to wide acclaim the following year – the newspaper Bergens Tidende described it as “… a complex rendition of addiction and betrayal.” Besides her writing, she now holds a doctorate in applied linguistics, and continues to write on the subject in newspapers and journals. The people figuring in Uri’s novels are brilliantly constructed to function both as witty takes on stereotypes, and as fully rounded characters, making Uri’s readers laugh at the characters’ expense on one page, and root for them on

the next. The time she spent as an academic at the University of Oslo and other educational institutions provided her with a wealth of material upon which she drew to write Norway’s first campus novel, The Best Among Us (2006). It stayed on the national bestseller list for 52 weeks and has become a cult novel, selling in 80,000 copies. A Righteous Man followed in 2009, a modern family drama in the spirit of Ingmar Bergman, a riveting story about people who hurt each other because they love each other. In 2011 she published Bitches, a devilish, wise and witty book about four women taking action and doing something about the kind of the men who use women as footstools. Clearing Out followed in 2013, her most personal and moving book so far. Helene Uri’s books have been translated into 14 languages.

Awards 1998: Kulturdepartementets fagbokpremie

Selected titles Ice (Hålke), novel, 2016 Clearing Out (Rydde ut), novel, 2013 You Beatiful Bastard! (Din vakre jævel) w/Arne Svingen, youth novel, 2012 Bitches (Kjerringer), novel, 2011 A Righteous Man (Den rettferdige), novel, 2009 The Best Among Us (De beste blant oss), novel, 2006 What is Language (Hva er språk), non-fiction, 2004 Nylon Angel (Engel av nylon), novel, 2003 Honey Tongues (Honningtunger), novel, 2003 Anna on a Friday (Anna på fredag), novel for youth 1995

Honey Tongues (Honningtunger), 2003

A Righteous Man (Den rettferdige), 2009

The honey tongues of the title belong to four friends in their thirties. They make up a ‘sewing circle’ where no sewing is being done, but much exquisite food is lovingly prepared and consumed and increasingly bitchy gossip exchanged. The novel follows their once-every-three-weeks meetings over the course of six months, as they take turns to entertain each other; the readers are privy to their thoughts and memories and discover how apparently innocent actions are motivated by emotional hang-ups with roots in childhood traumas. The tension builds towards a gourmet trip to Copenhagen, where, during an eight-course meal, the masks drop and fear and loathing are revealed.

Karsten and Marianne fall in love, marry each other, have children – and then Karsten cheats on Marianne. In her anger and bitterness, she begins to suspect him of having committed a crime far worse: Could he have assaulted his own daughters? Marianne contacts a retired judge, Edvard Frisbakke, a man who has always regarded himself as a righteous person. All his life he has sentenced bad men to harsh punishments, firmly convinced that he has thus helped make the world a better place. Now he assists in convicting Karsten, and the small family is torn apart forever. But are things as they seem?

The people figuring in Uri’s novels are brilliantly constructed to function both as witty takes on stereotypes, and as fully rounded characters, making Uri’s readers laugh at the characters’ expense on one page, and root for them on the next.

PHOTO: PÅL LAUKLI

Fiction

I am Dina who sees the sleigh with

the person on it rush headlong down the steep slope. At first I think I am the one lying there tied to the sleigh. Because I feel pain more terrible than any I have ever known. Through crystal-clear reality, but beyond time and space, I am in touch with the face on the sleigh. Moments later, the sleigh crashes against an ice-covered rock. The horse actually loosed the carriage shaft and escaped being dragged down the slope! Amazing, how easily that happened! It must be late in the fall. Late for what? I do not have a horse. --I am Dina who feels the downward pull when the man on the sleigh reaches the deep, foaming pool. Then he crosses the vital boundary. I do not catch the final instant, which could have given me a glimpse of what everyone fears. The moment when time does not exist. Who am I? Where are space and place and time? Am I doomed to this forever?

HerbjĂ¸rg Wassmo Dinaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Book (Dinas bok)

When Wassmo does her magic, the story sets roots and the earth shakes. My oh my â&#x20AC;Ś Somehow it feels as this sequel not only measures up to the earlier Dina books, but, literarily, is even better accomplished. We are seeing a mature writer at her best. â&#x20AC;&#x201C; VG

PHOTO: ROLF M. AAGAARD

Fiction

Herbjørg Wassmo Herbjørg Wassmo (1942–) has earned her position and popularity in Norway and abroad through her abilities as a powerful storyteller with a special concern for exposed and vulnerable characters. HERBJØRG WASSMO was born and raised in Vesteraalen in Northern Norway, and her temperament as well as her writing is deeply rooted in the culture and the nature of this northern coastline. As a child she had already started to write poems, but decided to become a teacher instead. She made her debut in 1976 with a collection of poetry. Her breakthrough came with the first novel about Tora, The House with the Blind Glass Windows in 1981, followed by two further volumes to form the famous Tora trilogy. These books contribute to a Norwegian realistic tradition about the coming of age of the unusual and artistic child. Wassmo’s voice has a poetic and evocative power, taking the reader very close to the disintegration of the small human being

and her fight for dignity. Dina’s Book (1989) is a widespanning novel from the middle of the 19th century, and the location is the coast line of Northern Norway. A dramatic accident in Dina’s early life follows her forever, and she becomes a woman who challenges, astounds and bewitches her surroundings. In 1992 followed Dina’s Son (Lykkens sønn) and in 1997 Karna’s Legacy (Karnas arv), forming a fascinating universe that for twenty years has been called the Dina trilogy. In 2017 however, Wassmo published The One Who Sees, a sequel that, according to critics, “not only measures up to the earlier Dina books, but, literarily, is even better accomplished .” Wassmo’s works have been published in 29 countries.

Selected awards 2011: Ridder av Ordenen for kunst og litteratur, Frankrike 2010: Brages hederspris 1998: Jean Monnét-prisen (Frankrike) 1997: Amalie Skram-prisen 1991: Gyldendals legat 1987: Nordisk Råds litteraturpris 1984: Gyldendals Dokumentarbokpris 1983: Bokhandlerprisen 1981: Kritikerprisen

Selected titles The One Who sees (Den som ser), novel, 2017 These Moments (Disse øyeblikk), novel, 2013 A Hundred Years (Hundre år), novel, 2010 A Glass of Milk Please (Et glass melk takk), novel, 2006 The Seventh Meeting (Det sjuende møte), novel, 2000 The Dina trilogy (Dina-trilogien), novels, 1989-97 The Tora trilogy (Tora-trilogien), novels, 1981-86

The One Who Sees (Den som ser), 2017

The Tora trilogy (Tora-trilogien), 1981-1986

Twenty years after the Dina trilogy, this is a new, independent instalment in the large, epic account of Dina and her family. It is both an independent novel about guilt, reconciliation and forgiveness, and a continuation of the powerful story about Dina Grønelv and her descendants. The story of the wilful female figure of Dina has, since the publication of Dina’s Book in 1989, fascinated several generations of readers.

Herbjørg Wassmo’s trilogy about Tora, a girl fathered by a German soldier, ranks highly in recent Norwegian fiction. With convincing insight the author charts Tora’s painful progress from childhood to maturity, her step-father’s sexual assault of her, her mother’s self-effacement and the coldness of the people in the local community. It is a powerful, captivating reading and has an ever-growing readership, in Norway and abroad.

‘Wassmo at her finest. She exceeds herself in The One Who Sees. This is no less than great literature.’ – NRK

Fiction

Gunnhild Øyehaug Gunnhild Øyehaug (1975–) lives in Bergen. She teaches at the Academy of Creative Writing in Hordaland and has been an editor of the literary journals Kraftsentrum and Vagant, as well as a literary critic. SHE MADE her debut with the poetry collection Slave of the Blueberry in 1998. After a short story collection (Knots, 2004) and an essay collection (Chair and Ecstasy, 2006), she had her major breakthrough with her first novel, Wait, Blink in 2008. The novel was published to great acclaim in Denmark, Sweden and Germany. A film version of the novel premiered in 2015. Her international breakthrough came in 2017 when Knots was published in the USA by Farrar, Straus & Giroux to universal acclaim by the critics. Kirkus Review described it as ‘a near-perfect collection about the knots we tie our-

selves into and the countless ways we intertwine in the pursuit of sex, love, compassion, and family.’ The influential critic James Wood, in a lengthy piece in the New Yorker, presented her as ‘a Norwegian master of the short story. Her work is playful, often surreal, intellectually rigorous, and brief. She sometimes resembles Lydia Davis … Like her she can produce stabs of emotion, unexpected ghost notes of feeling, from pieces so short and offbeat that they seem at first like aborted arias … Øyehaug loves to mix her elements: she is always dabbing light onto shade, blending wit with torment, driving together bookishness and life.”

Awards 2010: Prins Eugens Kulturpris 2009: Sultprisen, Doblougprisen 2008: Nynorsk litteraturpris 2007: Tanums kvinnestipend 2006: Bjørnsonstipendet

Selected titles Mini Readings (Miniatyrlesingar), essays, 2017 Dream Writer (Draumeskrivar), short stories, 2016 Women in Men’s Shirts (Kvinner i for store herreskjorter), screenplay, 2015 Undis Brekke, novel, 2014 Knots + (Knutar +), short stories, 2012 Wait, Blink. A Perfect Image of an Inner Self (Vente, blinke. Eit perfekt bilete av eit personleg indre), novel, 2008 Chair and Ecstasy (Stol og ekstase), essays and short stories, 2006 Knots (Knutar), short stories, 2004 Slave of the Blueberry (Slaven av blåbæret), poems, 1998

Wait, Blink. A Perfect Image of an Inner Self (Vente, blinke. Eit perfekt bilete av eit personleg indre), 2008 Sigrid, a timid young literature student, has a allconsuming encounter with the author Kåre. The movie director Linnea is on a location hunt in Copenhagen. The performance artist Trine’s breasts are bursting with milk. And Viggo, also a literature student, longs to belong to someone or something. These shivering, sometimes desperate characters all play a role in Øyehaug’s wideranging, complex and playful novel. “One big, talking, thinking, original, unreasonably funny and self-ironic novel.” - Weekendavisen, Denmark

Knots + (Knutar +), 2012 A displeased deer; a man tied to his mother by an unseverable umbilical cord; a young woman who is secretly in love with her terminally ill best friend; a slightly peculiar UFO: Gunnhild Øyehaug’s acclaimed short stories balance between the sensuous, the surrealistic and the comic. “A Norwegian master of the short story” – James Wood, New Yorker

A near-perfect collection about the knots we tie ourselves into and the countless ways we intertwine in the pursuit of sex, love, compassion, and family. â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Kirkus Review about Knots

PHOTO: MAGNE SANDNES

Classics

“In the evening he sat outside the house waiting for the woodcock to arrive. Hege was asleep. Soft, rainy air, just right. A sudden realization shot through him: One day the woodcock won’t be flying across here any more. And one day there won’t be a woodcock any more. “Who’s moaning about disaster?” he said with sudden confidence into the rainy air, for there came his missing bird, familiar and wonderful, following the same path, uttering the same cries. Mattis only just managed to stop himself rousing Hege from her sleep. Tarjei Vesaas The Birds (Fuglane)

Classics

Jens Bjørneboe Jens Bjørneboe (1920–1976) was a poet, essayist, author and playwright, an eager participant in public debate, and a looming figure in the Norwegian cultural life of the 1960s and 70s. BORN INTO a wealthy family in Kristiansand, he began drinking at a young age, and suffered from bouts of depression – two hardships he struggled with until his suicide in 1976. In Sweden during the war he was introduced to the Anthroposophical Society, influencing his writing through the 1950s. His critically acclaimed debut – simply called Poems (1951) – was published just as he took up teaching at the Waldorf School in Oslo, where he remained for seven years. Creating a heated debate about the school system, the novel Jonas (1955) was Bjørneboe’s breakthrough. In the 1960s he underwent political radicalization, becoming an increasingly loud enfant terrible in the public discourse. A polemicist of fierce energy, Bjørneboe provoked the establishment by attacking its most sacred cows: a hypocritical

Christianity, an inhumane prison system, power-seeking politicians, corrupt police and depraved moral guardians – all concentrated in his particular bête noir: the authoritarian personality. His porn novel Without a Stitch (1966) caused scandal and echoed the Mykle trial in the mid-fifties, and his trilogy History of Bestiality (1966–73) aspired to account for all the cruelties of human history, no less. From a young poet in the thrall of Rilkean poetics, to a writer assaulting Western culture from a European perspective, while balancing an existential and mystical point of view with social engagement, Bjørneboe remains one of Norway’s most dominant post-war literary figures. Rash, eloquent and outspoken, he is described as an element of unrest, as controversial as he was courageous.

Awards 1974: Doblougprisen, Riksmålsforbundets litteraturpris, Kritikerprisen (for The Silence) 1972: Gyldendals legat

Selected titles The Sharks (Haiene), novel, 1974 The Silence (Stillheten), novel, 1973 Police and Anarchy (Politi og anarki), essays, 1972 We Who Loved America (Vi som elsket Amerika), essays, 1970 Powderhouse (Kruttårnet), novel, 1969 Semmelweiss, play, 1968 Moment of Freedom (Frihetens øyeblikk), novel, 1966 Without a Stitch (Uten en tråd), novel, 1966 Jonas, novel, 1955 Poems (Dikt), poems, 1951

History of Bestiality (Bestialitetens historie), 1966–1973 With the History of Bestiality trilogy, Bjørneboe turns his attention to the evil inherent in the human race, and to its atrocities: from the conquest of the Americas to the gas chambers of the Third Reich, and beyond to the post-war exploitation of the Third World. In the first volume of the series, Moment of Freedom (1966), the narrator, a servant of justice in a Principality in the Alps, is a daily witness to injustice masquerading as court of law – an experience that sets him off on an odyssey through human experi-

ence as well as his own past, asking what went wrong with mankind. The second volume, Powderhouse (1969), is set in a mental hospital in southern France housing a strange cast of characters, any of whom could have committed the execution-like hanging of an ex-German SS member around which the plot, which is akin to an espionage potboiler, revolves – a plot incorporating three long lectures on symptomatology, the history of execution, and heresy and heretics.

As with the first two books, The Silence (1973) rejects the traditional modes of fiction to posit an essay-like novel of ideas, philosophy, and argumentation. It explores not just European history, but crimes committed by Europeans against the rest of humanity in the name of expansion and conquest. Despite its presentation of man’s inhumanity, and its grim portrayal of the narrator’s plunge into depression, The Silence does not depress – it praises man’s immeasurable capacity for good.

Classics

While balancing an existential and mystical point of view with social engagement, BjĂ¸rneboe remains one of Norwayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s most dominant post-war literary figures.

PHOTO: TOR GULLIKSRUD

HobĂŚk Haff was always ahead of the prevailing literary trends, simply by sticking to her own, strong voice â&#x20AC;&#x201C; each book at the same time being something entirely new and something unmistakably Haffian.

PHOTO: GRO JARTO

Classics

Bergljot Hobæk Haff Bergljot Hobæk Haff (1925–2016) is counted amongst Norway’s finest novelists. Her oeuvre numbers 16 novels, characterized by a clever and original approach to the narrative, by a poetic inventiveness, and by wit and wisdom. BORN IN the village of Botne in Vestfold, Hobæk Haff was educated as a teacher in Oslo. After her final exams she left for Denmark, married and took up work as a teacher outside of Copenhagen, where she stayed for ten years. In the late fifties she returned to Oslo to pursue her career as a writer, her second marriage taking her back to Denmark for several years, before again returning to Norway, living quietly and secluded. For most of her life she worked as a writer – after the publication of her first novel, she left her profession as a teacher for good. Her 1956 debut, The Avalanche, is a psychological-realistic portrayal of a marriage, discussing themes such as free will, responsibility, shame and deep inner conflict. It was well received, praised for

its brave and daring portrayal of people pushed to their wits’ end. Writing several historical novels, Hobæk Haff was always ahead of the prevailing literary trends, simply by sticking to her own, strong voice – each book at the same time being something entirely new and something unmistakably Haffian. In clear and imaginative prose she kept on tackling original and challenging themes, most of her books combining a mythological aspect with a realistic portrayal of humans, often addressing the religious longings of man. Her characters are often outcasts from society; isolated, expelled or persecuted, many of them strong women in a patriarchal world. Hobæk Haff was awarded a number of prestigious literary awards for her books.

Awards 1998: Anders Jahres kulturpris 1996: Brageprisen, Riksmålsprisen, Kritikerprisen 1995: Amalie Skram-prisen 1989: Aschehougprisen 1988: Det norske Akademi for sprog og litteraturs Ærespris 1985: Doblougprisen 1975: Gyldendals jubileumspris 1962: Det norske kritikerlags pris, Gyldendals Legat

Selected titles The Burning of Sigbrit (Sigbrits bålferd), novel, 1999 Shame (Skammen), novel, 1996 The Price of Purity (Renhetens pris), novel, 1992 The Divine Tragedy (Den guddommelige tragedie), novel, 1989 I, Bakunin (Jeg, Bakunin), novel, 1983 The Witch (Heksen), novel, 1974 Bonfire (Bålet), novel, 1962

The Bonfire (Bålet), 1962

Shame (Skammen), 1996

“The teacher was exactly as commonplace as a teacher is supposed to be in such a small corner of the world.” Thus begins Hobæk Haff’s modern classic The Bonfire. Though being commonplace, the teacher is also different: with her vast knowledge of herbs she cures her students of a number of ailments. Within the span of a year, two men arrive in the community – a friendly, taciturn shoemaker, and an alluring, dangerous painter, the latter charming the locals and the teacher alike, leaving devastation in his wake. With this highly praised novel, Hobæk Haff distances herself from strict realism, writing a timeless story of the tension between the good and evil sides of human existence.

Shame is a compelling and ambitious tale of suffering and redemption. It is the story of Idun, a woman no less intelligent than her successful twin sister, Kathrine, but a succession of traumatic childhood experiences condemn her to a life spent mostly in a mental hospital (at her sister’s instigation). There she begins to write of the trials of her own life as well as those of Norway itself: her experiences fuse with the German occupation of her country, the shame of collaboration, and the moral and spiritual upheavals of a nation – and of a sister – betrayed. The novel is luminous, written with the finest psychological insight and a streak of devastating black comedy.

Classics

Knut Hamsun Acclaimed author Knut Hamsun (1859–1952) is considered by many as the most prominent literary figure in Norway since Ibsen. From his experimental novels of the 1890s to his grand epic novels of the interwar period, his works are still widely read today. HAMSUN GREW up in Northern Norway, and held a number of different jobs before his breakthrough as an author in 1890 with Hunger – a novel which garnered excellent reviews when first published, and has since been named as a highly important forerunner for the European modernist novel. Following the release of Hunger Hamsun toured the country with a lecture criticizing the so-called Four Greats of Norwegian literature: Ibsen, Bjørnson, Kielland and Lie. He found their works to be bland depictions of society, and called for a literature that dared explore the unconscious, as he himself had done. Through the 1890s Hamsun continued to write novels focused on the psychological aspects of the human mind, later adopting a

more objective, realistic narrative style, all the way writing in a prose as sharp as it is poignant. Though most well known for his novels, he also wrote poems, short stories, plays and non-fiction. Hamsun remains controversial to this day, as he sided with Germany during both world wars. Late in his life he was sent to trial because of his Nazi sympathies, an experience he writes about in his last (partly fictional, partly non-fictional) book, On Overgrown Paths (1949). Today Hamsun not only holds a special place in Norwegian literature, he is also a highly influential figure in European literature. In 1920 he was the second Norwegian author to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Awards 1920: Nobelprisen i litteratur

Selected titles On Overgrown Paths (Paa gjengrodde stier), novel/memoir, 1949 Wayfarers (Landstrykere), novel, 1927 Growth of the Soil (Markens grøde), 1917 Benoni, novel, 1908 Rosa, novel, 1908 Dreamers (Sværmere), novel, 1904 Victoria, novel, 1898 Pan, novel, 1894 Mysteries (Mysterier), novel, 1892 Hunger (Sult), novel, 1890

Hunger (Sult), 1890

Growth of the soil (Markens grøde), 1917

A classic of modern literature, Hunger is the story of a writer roaming the streets of 1890s Christiania (now Oslo), struggling on the brink of starvation, while trying to scrape a living writing articles. He soon struggles not only to sell what he writes, but to write anything at all, and quickly spirals into despair while stubbornly clinging to a sense of self-worth and artistic pride. Devoid of plot in a traditional sense, Hunger focuses on the narrator’s worst struggles when existing on the bare minimum. As hunger overtakes his body and his mind, he slides inexorably into paranoia, and makes progressively less rational decisions. The descent into madness is recounted in increasingly urgent and disjointed prose as he loses his grip on his body as well as reality.

Growth of the Soil is an epic and vibrant vision of peasant life. A grand family saga, the novel tells the story of Isak, a taciturn, hard-working man who leaves his village behind to clear a homestead and raise a family in the untilled tracts of the North Norwegian backcountry. A work of calm, stern beauty and biblical power, by turns affecting and ponderous, the novel moves at the pace of the passing seasons and the growth of the crops on which the characters’ lives depend. Through themes of individual freedom and the human need to reconcile with nature, and through subtle criticism of society, urbanization and industrialism, Hamsun hit a nerve in post-war Europe. Growth of the Soil won Hamsun the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1920.

“The classic novel of humiliation, even beyond Dostoyevsky” – Observer “One of the most disturbing novels in existence” – Time Out

Classics

Through the 1890s Hamsun continued to write novels focused on the psychological aspects of the human mind, later adopting a more objective, realistic narrative style, all the way writing in a prose as sharp as it is poignant.

PHOTO: AAGE REMFELDT

PHOTO: FRED MONCLAIR

The Rope Ladder holds up remarkably well today, introducing both Mykle’s eminent prose and several of the major themes running through his oeuvre – namely, the young man’s concurrent confidence and sense of insecurity; his conquests and yearnings.

Classics

Agnar Mykle Agnar Mykle (1915–1994), born in Trondheim, is one of the most celebrated and controversial authors in modern Norwegian literature.

STUDYING SUBJECTS as diverse as economics and puppetry (the latter an art form he would pioneer in Norway together with his wife Jane), Mykle began writing fiction during the war, making his literary debut in 1948 with the short story collection The Rope Ladder. It was well received, and holds up remarkably well today, introducing both Mykle’s eminent prose and several of the major themes running through his oeuvre – namely, the young man’s concurrent confidence and sense of insecurity; his conquests and yearnings. Mykle is best known for his novels featuring Ask Burlefot, Lasso Round the Moon (1954) and The Song of the Red Ruby (1956). They were intended to be the first two installments of a trilogy, but it was never completed – The Song of the Red Ruby was confiscated

by the City Court shortly after it was published due to its allegedly obscene, sexually explicit content. The verdict was later overturned, but the trial took its toll on Mykle. In the 1960s he expressed himself frequently through public letters, and he was gradually seen as an eccentric. After the publication of a slim, but moving two-story book, Largo (1967), Mykle retired from public life entirely. Although writing only a handful of books, Mykle remains a hugely influential figure of Norwegian post-war literature. The trial, scandalous both because of The Song of the Red Ruby’s explicit content and for its easily recognizable models, was important in paving the way for a less prudent literature, and is as relevant as ever in the light of today’s debate on the borders between fiction and reality.

Awards 1954: Gyldendals legat, Kirke- og undervisningsdepartementets premiering

Titles Rubicon, novel, 1965 Largo, short stories 1969 Cross My Heart (Kors på halsen), short stories, 1958 The Song of the Red Ruby (Sangen om den røde rubin), novel, 1956 Lasso Round the Moon (Lasso rundt fru Luna), novel, 1954 I Don’t Care, Said the Boy (Jeg er like glad, sa gutten), short stories, 1952 The Hotel Room (Tyven, tyven skal du hete), novel, 1951 The Rope Ladder (Taustigen), short stories, 1948

The Song of the Red Ruby (Sangen om den røde rubin), 1956

Lasso Round the Moon (Lasso rundt fru Luna), 1954

The story of Ask Burlefot’s road through shame, defeats and triumphs towards a deeper and more honest understanding of himself, opened the eyes of an entire generation. Ask is uncouth, stumbling and superbly human, and his early sexual encounters are described with all the honesty, fear and intensity with which love is first explored. Describing the complete anatomy of love without being obscene is one of Mykle’s triumphs. In this novel, Ask’s soon playful, soon shameful erotic encounters are balanced by the presence of Embla, a personification of the idea of true love. The Song of the Red Ruby is an intense and vital bildungsroman, rich in youthful hubris and lust for life, but also with harrowing soul searching and self-contempt.

In the opening of Lasso Round the Moon “a tall, stork-like man” enters the night train on the central station in Oslo. This is 32 year-old composer Ask Burlefot; large, gangling and acutely sensitive, heading home to bury his younger brother Balder. In the shaking, darkened sleeping car, Ask starts searching through the memories of his youth, and from here the captivating story of one of the greatest Norwegian post-war novels unfolds; a vital and tender knock-out of a novel, a story of love and lust and family.

Classics

Cora Sandel Cora Sandel (1880–1974) is highly regarded nationally and internationally as a unique voice in Norwegian literature. With the Alberta trilogy, published between 1926 and 1939, she cemented her position as one of our finest novelists. BORN SARA FABRICIUS in Christiania (now Oslo) and raised in Tromsø, Sandel left home to pursue a career as a painter, living in France and Italy (mainly Paris) for 15 years. Short on money, she started submitting travel letters and short stories to various Norwegian newspapers to scrape a living. One of these stories piqued the interest of the publishing director at Gyldendal, who encouraged her to write a novel. When Alberta and Jacob was published under a pseudonym in 1926, Sandel was 46, recently divorced, and living in Sweden with her young son. The novel was an immediate success, and sold surprisingly well for a debut, making it possible for Sandel to earn a living from her writing. The Alberta trilogy is not autobiographical, but Sandel certainly makes use of her own experiences.

Setting her stories in Tromsø or Paris, she often wrote of female artists, portraying personal and artistic growth, emancipation, loneliness and exile with wit and compassion. Through the intensity of her gaze, she makes us look at these people and understand the intricacies of individual moral dilemmas, the courage of small rebellions, and the tragedy of any one person’s everyday life. Sandel’s literary production does not cover many titles, but they are all characterized by her condensed, precise prose. Critics often liken her writing to impressionist painting, it being colorful, evocative and nuanced. For her 1954 publication Krane’s Café she chose the label ‘interior with figures’ rather than novel, a label fitting for much of her writing.

Awards 1937: Gyldendals legat

Selected titles The Leech (Kjøp ikke Dondi), novel, 1958 Figures on a Dark Background (Figurer på mørk bunn), short stories, 1949 Krane’s Café (Kranes konditori), novel, 1945–1946 Animals I’ve Known (Dyr jeg har kjent), short stories, 1945 Alberta Alone (Bare Alberte), novel, 1939 Many Thanks, Doctor (Mange takk, doktor), short stories, 1935 Carmen and Maja (Carmen og Maja), short stories, 1932 Alberta and Freedom (Alberte og friheten), novel, 1931 A Blue Sofa (En blå sofa), short stories, 1927 Alberta and Jacob (Alberte og Jakob), novel, 1926

The Alberta trilogy (Alberte-trilogien), 1926–1939 Alberta and Jacob (1926), the first volume of the trilogy, introduces Alberta Selmer, one of the 20th century’s great anti-heroines: Imaginative and intelligent, trapped in a stiflingly provincial town in the north of Norway, she is a misfit whose only affinity is for her extrovert brother Jacob. Her mother makes no attempt to conceal her disappointment at her daughter’s social failings, and Alberta is desperate to get away. When Jacob escapes to a life at sea, Alberta’s rebellion, though muted and ineffectual, begins to grow.

In Alberta and Freedom (1931) Alberta escapes from her life in Norway to seek out Paris, a city where the bohemians will never die, where there is absinthe and endless talk of Cubism. But Paris is not all she imagined. Although she begins to write pieces for newspapers, Alberta’s self-esteem is low, and her inexperience makes her prey to the casual approaches of predatory men. Relationships, when they happen, are neither easy nor happy. Feeling her talent beginning to suffer and her freedom stagnating, Alberta faces a struggle to survive.

In Alberta Alone (1939), Alberta, now mistress to Sivert, is living in Paris with their small son. While Sivert is involved in a liaison with a Swedish painter, Alberta falls in love with Pierre, a writer just returned from the First World War. With subtlety and insight, Cora Sandel depicts the gradual corrosion of a relationship, against the background of the aftermath of the Great War. “She writes in a low key, with exact domestic detail, unhurried, lucid and sure. The picture she builds up is unforgettable.” – Daily Telegraph.

Classics

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Vesaasâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; works are characterized by terse, symbolic prose; cut to the bone, but humming with a quiet lyricism.

Classics

Tarjei Vesaas Tarjei Vesaas (1897–1970) is regarded one of Scandinavia’s foremost fiction authors of the 20th century; as a modernist, he maintained a degree of technical experimentation throughout his career. BORN IN Vinje, Telemark as the eldest of three sons, Vesaas was expected to inherit the family farm, but instead he pursued a career as a writer, thus breaking a 300-year tradition. Several publishers turned him down before his debut, Children of Humans (1923), was accepted, and it took a further eight novels (as well as a collection of poems and a collection of short stories) before his proper breakthrough with The Great Cycle (1934). Though most widely acclaimed for his novels, Vesaas was also one of Norway’s major modern poets; he also wrote several plays and collections of short stories. His literary career spanning almost 50 years, Vesaas wrote more than 25 books, most while secluded at his farmhouse in Vinje together with his wife Halldis Moren Vesaas, herself an acclaimed poet and writer. Written in nynorsk rather

than the more common, Danish-influenced bokmål, Vesaas’ works are characterized by terse, symbolic prose; cut to the bone, but humming with a quiet lyricism. There are few traces of the urban settings common in modernist works; rather, Vesaas’ stories take place in remote locations, and are about simple rural people who undergo a severe psychological drama, described with immense insight into the bittersweet human condition. Dealing with themes such as death, guilt and angst, his books are often somber and sinister. Two of his most celebrated works, The Birds (1957) and The Ice Palace (1963), both fit this bill. Here, Vesaas sets forth tragic fates with a language of quiet, haunting beauty. The Ice Palace earned Vesaas the prestigious Nordic Council’s Literature Prize.

Awards 1967: Bokhandlerprisen 1964: Nordisk råds litteraturpris 1957: Doblougprisen 1953: Den litterære Venezia-prisen 1946: Melsom-prisen 1943: Gyldendals legat

Selected titles Life by the Brook (Liv ved straumen), poems, 1970 The Boat in the Evening (Båten om kvelden), novel, 1968 The Ice Palace (Isslottet), novel, 1963 The Birds (Fuglane), novel, 1957 Spring Night (Vårnatt), novel, 1954 Land of Hidden Fires (Løynde eldars land), poetry, 1953 The Winds (Vindane), short stories, 1952 The House in the Dark (Huset i mørkret), allegory, 1945 The Seed (Kimen), novel, 1940 The Great Cycle (Det store spelet), novel, 1934 Children of Humans (Menneskebonn), novel, 1923

Fuglane (The Birds), 1957

The Ice Palace (Is-slottet), 1963

The Birds tells the story of forty-year-old Mattis, a man of simple, child-like mind, living in a small house near a lake with his sister Hege. Profoundly sensitive to his surroundings, Mattis is acutely aware of the caution with which other people observe him. Wholly reliant on his sister and terrified of losing her, Mattis struggles to find a place for himself in a world that does not seem to want him. With spare simplicity, Vesaas’s straightforward prose subtly reveals Mattis’s perspective, and readers will find themselves shifting irrevocably from observers of his experience to participants in it. The Birds is a deeply nuanced examination of identity and responsibility, with abundant narrative suspense, silent intensity and somber, beautiful lyricism.

The Ice Palace is set during the intense cold of a Norwegian inland winter, in a small, rural community where elevenyear-old Unn, a recent arrival, lives with her aunt. Shy and introverted, Unn strikes up an unlikely friendship with boisterous classmate Siss, and an unusual bond develops between them. But when Unn learns of ‘the ice palace’ – a giant structure formed by a frozen waterfall – she sets off alone to visit it, never to return. The Ice Palace is written in prose of lyrical economy that ranks among the most memorable achievements of modern literature.

Poetry

Those who lost their names in the whiteness, were reported missing. Tor Ulven Patience (Det tĂĽlmodige)

Poetry

Gunvor Hofmo Gunvor Hofmo (1921–1995) is one of our finest modernist lyricists, likened to poets such as Edith Södergran and Emily Dickinson. The major theme of her oeuvre is human suffering, a theme she explores with an unparalleled intensity and vitality. BORN IN Oslo in 1921, Hofmo was 19 years old when Norway was invaded by the Nazis in 1940. She lost several people who were dear to her during the war, amongst them her close friend Ruth Maier. This experience was a heavy blow to Hofmo, and deeply influenced both her life and her writing. Hofmo’s work consists of two phases. Her 1946 debut I Long for a Home Amongst Humans was exceptionally well received, and the then 25-year-old Hofmo was quickly named the voice of a new generation. The collection hit a nerve, articulating the desperation and hopelessness of post-war life; the lack, as Hofmo put it, of the everyday. Her debut was followed up by four more collections, all carrying a tone of melancholy, anxiety and resignation, as well as explor-

ing Christian motifs. She struggled with depression and mental illness most of her life, and following the publication of her 1955 collection A Will to an Eternity she was hospitalized, and went quiet for 16 years. Her comeback collection Guest on Earth (1971) earned her the prestigious Critic’s Award, and was the first in a new string of publications in which she continually expanded her poems’ emotional range and her repertoire of motifs. Living a secluded life in Oslo, Hofmo kept publishing collections of poems every other year until her death in 1995. A collection of diary entries, short stories and essays was published posthumously, but she was, first and foremost, a poet, with 20 collections of poems being published in her lifetime.

Awards 1989: Riksmålsprisen 1982: Doblougprisen 1971: Kritikerprisen

Selected titles Epilogue (Epilog), poems 1994 All Is Nameless in the Night (Navnløst er alt i natten), poems 1991 Stars and Childhood (Stjernene og barndommen), poems, 1986 Interlude (Mellomspill), poems, 1974 Road Blocks (Veisperringer), poems, 1973 November, poems, 1972 Guest on Earth (Gjest på jorden), poems, 1971 A Will to an Eternity (Testamente til en evighet), poems, 1955 Vigil (I en våkenatt), poems, 1954 Blind Nightingales (Blinde nattergaler), poems 1951 From an Alternate Reality (Fra en annen virkelighet), poems, 1948 I Long for a Home Amongst Humans (Jeg vil hjem til menneskene), poems, 1946

I Long for a Home Amongst Humans (Jeg vil hjem til menneskene), 1946

Guest on Earth (Gjest på jorden), 1971

Published in late December 1946, I Long for a Home Amongst Humans was praised by the critics for its quivering, dark atmosphere and splendid imagery. Hofmo explores the loneliness and agony of living in a world where there can no longer be a sense of normality – a world stuck in a constant state of emergency. Beneath a surface of coldness and isolation, there is a longing for contact – with God, with other human beings.

In terms of themes, longing, tone, power of expression and authority, Guest on Earth is unmistakably Hofmoian, but in temperament it is somewhat milder and more sober than her post-war collections. The poems, only a few of them rhymed, share a subdued glow; though they are at once bitter and mournful, they are still somehow – almost stubbornly – hopeful. The expressionistic lament of Hofmo’s early poems is here supplied by a quiet, intense imagism, elevating or upturning everyday objects, having them burst from within with equal parts ecstasy and tragedy.

“These poems spring from a young and desperately lonely mind, blooming like frost crystals on a window pane. But within these frosty flowers one can sense the sun-like glow of the heart’s red blood” – Land og Folk, Denmark

Her 1946 debut hit a nerve, articulating the desperation and hopelessness of post-war life; the lack, as Hofmo put it, of the everyday.

Poetry

I SLEEP WITH MY EYES OPEN I dream of her. I weave her with the threads of light the way they’re spun out in the salty drop that lubricates my eyes’ idleness. I sleep with my eyes wide open. On the bottom of the black open sky the light streams from the big stars into the prisms of desire, and I dream of her in the wild light under the torn night parasol of sleep. I dream of her, I stitch her together with needles of light the way they dash like splinters in the everlasting tears, stuck to the seer’s fate. I sleep with my eyes open, I sail through the rainbow gates in insatiable evocations of earthly visions.

Torgeir Schjerven Thoughts and Other Personal Affairs (Tanker og andre personlige bedrifter)

Confronting her own understanding and exploring philosophical and political questions, she frequently introduces objects and concepts that may not seem typically poetical.

PHOTO: ROLF M. AAGAARD

Poetry

Tone Hødnebø Tone Hødnebø (1962–) is one of Norway’s most important contemporary poets. What characterizes her poetry, above all, is her critique of civilization, which is implicit in everything she writes. CONFRONTING HER own understanding and exploring philosophical and political questions, she frequently introduces objects and concepts that may not seem typically poetical. Hødnebø grew up in Tønsberg and now lives in Oslo. She debuted in 1989 with the collection Noise, and has since released another five poetry collections, in addition to a book on poetics, Shameful Pompeii. She has also recreated a selection of Emily Dickinson’s poems, Dirty Little Heart (1995/Revised 2015), and Glass, Irony and God (2014), by Canadian author Anne Carson. In the nineties, she was co-editor of the magazine Vagant, and she has both been a guest teacher in poetry at the Writing Academy in Hordaland (2000-2006) and taught

at the Writers’ College in Bø. In the period 2006-2010 she was a supervisor and Adjunct Professor of the Literary Form at the University of Gothenburg. In the newspaper Vårt Land, Knut Ødegaard wrote of her most recent poem collection, Usefulness and Deeds Done: “With her first new collection in eight years, Tone Hødnebø is a big deal in Norwegian poetry: learned and challenging poems, often written in scientific terminology, which force the reader to see new connections and ask qustions about established positions [...] Tone Hødnebø writes unusually well, with a sure touch and a sense of the finer points of language. The collection is composed with a method that recalls musical counterpoint and polyphony.”

Awards 2007: Festspilldikter i Bergen 2005: Doblougprisen 2003: Sultprisen 1997: Den norske lyrikklubbens pris 1995: Tanum bokhandels kvinnestipend

Titles Usefulness and Deeds Done (Nytte og utførte gjerninger), poems, 2016 Notes (Nedtegnelser), poems, 2008 A Happy Moment (Et lykkelig øyeblikk), selected poems, 2005 Shameful Pompeii (Skamfulle Pompeii), poetics, 2004 The Scaling Ladder (Stormstigen), poems, 2002 Pendulum (Pendel), poems, 1997 Dark Quadrate (Mørkt kvadrat), poems, 1994 Noise (Larm), poems, 1989

Usefulness and Deeds Done (Nytte og utførte gjerninger), 2016

A Happy Moment (Et lykkelig øyeblikk), 2005

“The substantive came before the verb,” writes Tone Hødnebø in a poem, trying to remember how language takes control of consciousness. The poems can be read as a battle zone between what we immediately experience and what we try to explain or tell to someone other than ourselves. Recurring central motives relate to how we mirror our surroundings, and vice versa – and how we can know what we see and hear is true. Some stories are durable, while others are transitory. But what happens when one remembers mistakes, chronology is altered and poems are written backwards?

This is a collection of Tone Hødnebø’s poetry, selected and edited by Janike Kampevold Larsen. One of Hødnebø’s greatest ambitions is to study poetry, per se: But what is poetry? Where do you find it? How does it work? This is a task that Hødnebø addresses with a thoroughness, precision and stamina that is astonishing – all the more so as it is coupled with a poetic sensitivity and musicality that is more or less unparalleled in Norwegian poetry. In addition to poems from earlier collections, the book includes a handful of poems that have not been published before.

Poetry

Cecilie Løveid Cecilie Løveid (1951–) is one of our most original, experimental and diverse authors, the broad span of her genre-bending works covering poetry, prose, novels, dramatic texts, opera libretti, children’s books and texts for art performances. HER WORK can be roughly divided into lyrical prose/novels in the 1970s, dramatic texts in the 1980s and 90s, and poetry from 2000 onwards, though a lyrical aspect is present throughout all of her work. Born in Mysen, Løveid was only a teenager when she had her first texts published in the late 1960s, before making her proper literary debut with the experimental novel Most in 1972. Though dealing with typical themes of the 1970s, many pertaining to women’s roles, Løveid used a form that drastically set her apart from the then-dominant social realism. Most of her works from this decade, including her breakthrough Suck (1979), are similar in themes and form: labelled novels, but rather consisting of lyrical pieces of short prose that create fragmented stories. In the 1980s and 1990s, she wrote a great number of prize-winning plays for

the stage, TV, and radio. Frequently performed outside Norway, Løveid is considered one of our most significant living playwrights. It is indicative of Løveid’s work that her Selected Poems, published in 1999, consists of several texts from her prose works and plays. From 2000 onwards, she has primarily written poetry, in which the dramatic form is present – several of her poems are monologues or dialogues. Always pushing genre boundaries, Løveid’s works are often lyrical, sensual, characterized by an associative use of imagery, clever intertextuality, playful imitation and reimagination, as well as poignant social criticism, set forth with an irony alternating between the subtle and the burlesque. Løveid now lives in Bergen, where she teaches at the Hordaland Academy of Writing, alongside working on her own writing.

Selected awards 2016: Heddaprisen 2015: Ibsenprisen 2014: Diktartavla, Kritikarprisen for teater 2001: Gyldendalprisen 2000: Amalie Skram-prisen 1999: Ibsenprisen 1990: Doblougprisen 1983: Prix Italia 1984: Aschehougprisen 1979: Gyldendals legat

Selected titles Travelling Exhibitions (Vandreutstillinger), poems, 2017 New Rituals (Nye ritualer), poems, 2008 Spilt, poems, 2001 Maria Q, play, 1994 Double Delight (Dobbel nytelse), play, 1988 Seagull Eaters (Måkespisere), three plays, 1983 Suck (Sug), novel, 1979 Askøy, Always Overcast (Alltid skyer over Askøy), novel 1976 Most, novel, 1972

Suck (Sug), 1979

Travelling Exhibitions (Vandreutstillinger), 2017

In Sug, a series of lyrical texts, grouped together in sections, shift between the perspectives of friends Kjersti and Monica, the former a single mother whose affair with the married Mats Oeding leads to a pregnancy and an abortion. Kjersti continues her draining relationship with Mats, one bearing a resemblance to that of Mats’ almost-namesake, Oedipus; Kjersti eroticizes her estranged father while simultaneously looking for fatherly support in Mats. Intimate, playful and formally innovative, with a rhythm and imagery rendering the reader breathless, this is a novel about loss and longing, about wishing to be seen but fearing to be found, needing to be loved and expecting to be abandoned.

Vandreutstillinger is a collection of art and artists, their lives or works. The poems are contemplations around encounters with art, tentatively proposing new saints within the field. Many poems are ekphrastic, as likely to comment on and/or recreate the artworks through text as they are to ask fundamental questions about art, text, or life. Here are poems on Munch and Obstefelder, Gerhard Richter and Andy Warhol, Tom Waits, Gunvor Hofmo, John Donne and Nelly Sachs.

Always pushing genre boundaries, Løveid’s works are often lyrical, sensual, characterized by an associative use of imagery, clever intertextuality, playful imitation and reimagination, as well as poignant social criticism, set forth with an irony alternating between the subtle and the burlesque.

PHOTO: SØREN BRUUN

Poetry

Øyvind Rimbereid Prize-winning and praised by the critics, Øyvind Rimbereid (1966–) is one of our most significant and influential living poets, with a production that is as thoroughly high in quality as it is diverse in themes. BORN IN Stavanger, Rimbereid made his literary debut in 1993 with the short story collection It Has Begun, followed by two more prose works. At the turn of the century, he made his debut as a poet, and unlike many writers it was this transition – from prose to poetry, not the other way around – that gained him a wider audience, and rapidly had him unanimously declared one of the most interesting and original Norwegian writers by the critics. His proper breakthrough came in 2004 with his third collection, Solaris Corrected, a collection unlike anything else in Norwegian literature; its title poem being a 40-page dystopian vision of post-oil Norway, written in a non-existent language. An immediate success, it was subsequently included as the newest of 25 works when a new, prestigious Norwegian literary canon was presented at the Norwegian Festival of Literature in 2007.

Rimbereid’s poems cover broad spans: temporally, spatially, thematically, formally. Rooted in the landscapes of Western Norway, he sets forth times and places near and far, allowing the poetic perception of place to be saturated with history, science, culture, philosophy and religion; with economy and ecology, with labor and commerce, with the tension between individuals and societies. Shifting between the essayistic and the narrative, his poems range in length from five lines to more than sixty pages, written in Stavanger dialect, in standard bokmål or in made-up hybrid languages. Sharp, knowledgeable, inquisitive, mind-bogglingly original and of an acute musicality, his work constantly breaks new ground, and keep challenging any notions one might have of the limits within which poetry normally functions. Rimbereid now lives in Stavanger.

Solaris Corrected (Solaris korrigert), 2004 Where Rimbereid, in his first two collections, examines different contemporary and historical landscapes, local and global; the strikingly innovative title poem of Solaris korrigert makes a leap into the future, suggesting a poetic impression of Western Norway in the year 2480. In a language unique to this poem that borrows from all those surrounding the North Sea, a quite ordinary laborer reflects curiously around day-to-day life, work, society and the future, in a text that is daunting, addictive and perplexing in equal measure. “Øyvind Rimbereid represents something entirely innovative. This collection is a once-in-a-generation publication.” – Fædrelandsvennen

Awards 2017: Aschehougprisen 2013: Gyldendalprisen, Kritikerprisen 2010: Doblougprisen, N.C. Kaser-Lyrikpreis 2008: Brageprisen 2004: Kritikerprisen, Årets dikt (NRKP2) 2002: Den norske Lyrikklubbens pris 2001: Sultprisen

Selected titles Leni’s Places (Lenis plassar), a poem, 2017 The Laws (Lovene), poems, 2015 Sea of Organs (Orgelsjøen), poems, 2013 Jimmen, a poem, 2011 Herbarium, poems, 2008 Why this Solitary Living (Hvorfor ensomt leve), essays, 2006 Solaris Corrected (Solaris korrigert), poems, 2004 Thread Journies (Trådreiser), poems, 2001 Late Topographies (Seine topografiar), poems, 2000 Years to Come (Kommende år), short stories, 1998 As the Sun Grows (Som solen vokser), novel, 1996

Herbarium, 2008 At first glance Herbarium evokes a longstanding poetic tradition, that of (often romantic) poems about flowers, but the poems’ floral names, their lack of use of dialect, and their hints of traditional forms in no way limit them. Grand in scope and vastly wise, they explore history and family, biology and politics, art and loss, ranging in mode from the rivetingly energetic to the painfully, beautifully quiet. Published in the thick of the 2008 financial crisis, the exceptional long poem “Tulip (mania)”, delving into 400 years of economic bubbles, had critics naming this a visionary collection.

PHOTO: NIKITA SOLENOV

Sharp, knowledgeable, inquisitive, mind-bogglingly original and of an acute musicality, his work constantly breaks new ground, and keep challenging any notions one might have of the limits within which poetry normally functions.

PHOTO: TOM SANDBERG

Poetry

Torgeir Schjerven Highly acclaimed, Torgeir Schjerven (1954–) has won acclaim both as a novelist and as a poet, with a distinct style of perceptive wonder.

SCHJERVEN WAS educated to become a visual artist, before making his literary debut in 1981 with the collection Gone. His output only covers a handful of titles – seven collections of poems, two novels and a children’s book, written together with his wife, poet Inger Elisabeth Hansen. Though mainly a writer of poetry, Schjerven was nominated for the Nordic Council’s Literature Prize and won the prestigious Norwegian Critics’ Prize for his 1994 novel Detour to Venus, an ironic and colorful work depicting love and identity with a flare both of Hamsun and Dante. As a poet, Schjerven writes with great enthusiasm and a wide range: sharp and cut-to-the-bone, romantic, baroque – a modernist poet unafraid of including echoes of older poetic forms. Often writing long poems, rhymed or unrhymed, political or personal, Schjerven

builds grand images that seek to shift the readers’ gaze upon the world, making them see familiar landscapes in a new light. Associative, perceptive and dizzying, his poems show a deep respect both for the workings of humans – the concrete and the everyday – and for the workings of nature, the great churn that we’re all caught up in. Schjerven lives in Oslo.

Awards and nominations

As a poet, Schjerven writes with great enthusiasm and a wide range: at once sharp and cut-to-the-bone, then romantic, then baroque – a modernist poet unafraid of including echoes of older poetic forms.

On this Special Occasion (I anledning dagen), poems, 2002

Nights’ Milk (Nettenes melk), 1986 Schjerven’s breakthrough as a poet, Night’s Milk, aims for great scopes: A sense of loss is contemplated through dizzying shifts in scale and materiality: from interplanetary motifs to bones and dirt, from sea to flesh. With a darkness reminiscent of that of Tor Ulven, in a language rich in alliteration, creating a rhythm that pushes the reader on, human impermanence is contrasted with the unending shifts between night and day: the sun is at once life-giving, yet mercilessly reminds us of how our days are numbered. Tactile, visceral, the human body is inevitably caught up in the rush of time, and eventually ground down by it, yet somehow a strong sense of longing prevails.

2005: Det Norske Akademis pris 2002: Halldis Moren Vesaas’ lyrikkpris 1995: Nordisk råds litteraturpris (nominated) 1994: Kritikerprisen 1987: Hartvig Kirans minnepris

Titles Harry’s Little Tear (Harrys lille tåre), poems, 2015 The Steady Surge of Delight in Genuinely Sad Music (Den stødige tilstundelsen av jubel i virkelig trist musikk), poems, 2006

Aimless Grace (En nåde uten mål), poems, 1998 Detour to Venus (Omvei til Venus), novel, 1994 Thoughts and Other Personal Affairs (Tanker og andre personlige bedrifter), poems, 1989 Nights’ Milk (Nettenes melk), poems, 1986 In the Bloody Blue (I det blodige blå), novel, 1984 Gone (Vekk), poems, 1981

The Steady Surge of Delight in Genuinely Sad Music (Den stødige tilstundelsen av jubel i virkelig trist musikk), 2006 In this collection, Schjerven establishes a poetic space that is as generous as it is intricate. There is room for it all: keen observations of minute details, and grand, meandering poetic imagery; declarations of love, and sharp satire; poems of political utility, and hushed meditations. Baroque and modern, rich in tradition and at the same time utterly unique, these are poems forged in a language of rare beauty.

Poetry

Tor Ulven Tor Ulven (1953–1995), Oslo-born poet and writer, is by many regarded the most original and significant poet of his generation. His works continue to fascinate, and are constantly being discovered by new generations of readers. ULVEN MADE his literary debut with The Shadow of the Primordial Bird in 1977, a collection influenced by his interest for surrealist poetry. The surrealist tendencies grew less prominent in the collections to come, but were never utterly abandoned. In the mid-80s he retreated for six years – after his death, a great number of poems from this period surfaced, and were published posthumously. The late 80s marked a shift from writing poetry to writing collections of short prose, and one novel, 1993’s Replacement. However, his prose is distinctly poetic, often making the distinction between genres seem superfluous. Ulven’s texts are acutely precise and saturated with nuances, merciless in their existential quest, and at the same time pervaded by musicality. Littered with skulls and fossils, Ulven’s poems carry

constant and pressing reminders of the impermanence of life. Often an archaeological motif is included – a digging through dirt and bones, through history, memory and body. The poems often have an element of the macabre, gleaming with a dark, twisted joie de mort, so to speak. There is no necessity for the baroque memento mori; rather, it has been pointed out that in Ulven’s oeuvre death is the prevailing force, illuminating the presence of a memento vivendi – frail reminders of life, set forth in images of an almost unsettling beauty. Praised by the critics and held in high regard amongst his colleagues, he started off as an author’s author. His small but devoted circle of readers soon grew as he steadily gained more recognition, and has continued to do so after his death, Ulven eventually assuming almost a mythical status.

Awards 1995: Doublougprisen 1993: Obstfelderprisen 1990: Hartvig Kirans minnepris

Selected titles Stone and Mirror (Stein og speil. Mixtum compositum), 1995 Wait and Not See (Vente og ikke se), stories, 1994 Replacement (Avløsning), novel, 1993 Consumption (Fortæring), prose, 1991 No, Not That (Nei, ikke det), stories, 1990 Junk Sun (Søppelsolen), prose, 1989 Burial Gifts (Gravgaver), prose, 1988 Patience (Det tålmodige), poems, 1987 Vanishing Point (Forsvinningspunkt), poems, 1981 After Us, Signs (Etter oss, tegn), poems, 1980 The Shadow of the Primordial Bird (I skyggen av urfuglen), poems, 1977

After Us, Signs (Etter oss, tegn), 1980

Patience (Det tålmodige), 1987

In After Us, Signs, the surrealistic imagery of Ulven’s early poems are toned down and in its place a more sober realism emerges, a poetic processing of the basic conditions of human existence – a realism that is present both in his poetry and prose. Yet this realism, expressed with meticulous precision, is a transcendent one, repealing the expected hierarchical, temporal and causal connections between man, things and time. Ulven’s poetic gaze is always searching for meaning, yet the poems betray how futile this search is when a broader perspective is applied: The durability of things and elements contrast with the impermanence of human life, making everything we leave behind – no matter how much we try to infuse our lives with meaning – signs.

Considered one of Ulven’s major works, the release of Patience in 1987 finally broke a six-year-long span of isolation. Artifacts, ruins, fossils, junk: It’s all there, all bundled together. Durability contrasts with decay to form an overarching perspective, which is captured in the multifaceted title, patience emerging as the (one) thing that endures, the observing human consciousness that – unaffected by time’s passage – remains unshaken as it describes the continuity of things, those insentient substances with no alternative but perpetual existence.

Ulven’s texts are acutely precise and saturated with nuances, merciless in their existential quest, and at the same time pervaded by musicality.

PHOTO: LARS AARØNÆS

Vold was part of the generation of modernists opposing other modernists, introducing a new simplicity, with a keen eye for the specific, the trivial and the ordinary. PHOTO: ULLA MONTAN

Poetry

Jan Erik Vold Jan Erik Vold (1939–) is one of the most influential poets of his generation, as well as an editor, translator, essayist, public debater and jazz poet.

WIDELY READ and hugely popular, his extensive output spans collections of poems to reinventions, essays, short prose, biographies, and records made in collaborations with musicians like Jan Garbarek and Chet Baker. Vold was born in Oslo and gained an early interest in Swedish and American poetry and jazz. From the early 60s he worked as an editor and contributor to numerous festivals and literary magazines – amongst them the benchmark magazine Profil, with which several soon-to-be-influential authors were associated – and throughout his career, he has made a remarkable effort to promote poets and authors often hugely different from himself. Vold made his literary debut with a collection of poems called Between Mirror and Mirror in 1965, which earned him the Tarjei Vesaas’ Debut Prize, and had his proper breakthrough with the

collection Mor Godhjerta’s Happy Version. Yes in 1968. Hugely productive, Vold was part of the generation of modernists opposing other modernists, introducing a new simplicity, with a keen eye for the specific, the trivial and the ordinary. However, Vold always maintained a degree of experimentation: each new collection of poems differs from the last one, sometimes radically so. His oeuvre includes absurdist poems; experimental poems that fragment language as a bearer of meaning; short, meditative poems influenced by East-Asian traditions (most prominent in several of his 70s collections); political poems, and long, meandering poems on everyday subjects, to name but a few. He has won numerous literary prizes, and was awarded an honorable doctorate at the University of Oslo in 2000. Vold currently lives in Stockholm, Sweden.

Awards 2001: Gyldendalprisen 1997: Brages ærespris 1993: Brageprisen. Lyrikk 1992: Kulturrådets oversetterpris 1988: Doblougprisen 1970: Dagbladets lyrikkpris 1968: Gyldendals legat 1966: Tarjei Vesaas’ debutantpris

Selected titles Great White Book to See (Store hvite bok å se), poems, 2011 The Dreammaker Said (Drømmemakeren sa), poems, 2004 Twelve Meditations (Tolv meditasjoner), poems, 2002 Singer of the Dark. On Gunvor Hofmo (Mørkets sangerske. En bok om Gunvor Hofmo), essays etc., 2000 The Sorrow. The Song. The Road (Sorgen. Sangen. Veien), poems, 1987 Circle, Circle (sirkel, sirkel), poems, 1979 Enthusiastic Essays (Entusiastiske essays), essays, 1976 Tracks, Snow (spor, snø), poems, 1970 Kykelipi, poems, 1969 Mor Godhjerta’s Happy Version. Yes (Mor Godhjertas glade versjon. Ja), poems, 1968

Great White Book to See (Store hvite bok å se), 2011

Kykelipi 1969

Great White Book to See is a further development of the leaping, intuitive global poetry Vold began with Twelve Meditations and The Dreammaker Said. Tied together by a string of poems in which snow is the main motif, the book meditates on childhood memories, marriage and old age; on the Dead Sea scrolls and the rising ocean; on Jesus and Buddha, on the Quran and the Edda; on resigning to the great whiteness that awaits us all. Playful and thoughtful, the poems range from the personal to the political. Engaging the Norwegian literary canon intertextually, Vold here examines a sense of belonging – in the world, in history, in a literary and cultural tradition, in one’s own memories.

Few Norwegian collections of poems have been received as enthusiastically, and caused as much indignation, as Vold’s Kykelipi. Ranging from the humorous to the melancholy, this collection combines refined metapoetry, rambling, down-to-earth poems, black humor and experiments with form and language. Short and strictly composed, the poems have playfully anti-poetic content, breaking down words and inventing new ones, making the reader reconsider what poetry is, should and could be.

Nonfiction

Non-fiction

A mild breeze brushed the tops of palm trees, strains of tropical bird song filled the air and now and then a boom from the surf crashing against the beach. But â&#x20AC;&#x201C; were there no people here? Ragnar Kvam jr. The Man and the Sea, Thor Heyerdahl

PHOTO: WALTER LEONARDI

As an author and conveyer of his own theories, he was remarkable. He held the rare quality of combining a dramatic story with knowledge and theory.

Non-fiction

Thor Heyerdahl Thor Heyerdahl (1914–2002) is the most famous Norwegian scientist and adventurer of all time. His travels to far-flung locations, hunting for confirmation of his bold theories, are unique. HEYERDAHL IS most famous for his revolutionary and highly courageous Kon-Tiki expedition in 1947. His aim was to prove that Polynesia could have been populated by Indians from South America, using a balsa raft for transportation. The rest is history – a company of six on a small raft for 101 days and nights, 4,300 miles in open sea. The amazing story about this dramatic journey was first published in 1948, and became one of the 20th century’s great international bestsellers, sold to more than 70 countries, and still counting! The book hit the bestseller lists again after the success of the movie version of the book in 2012. In 1955 Heyerdahl arrived on Easter Island to pursue his childhood dream of exploring its gigantic statues, with scientific results that went beyond his expectations. This journey led to the book titled

Aku-Aku (1957). Heyerdahl’s travels did not end with Kon-Tiki. In 196970 Heyerdahl built two papyrus boats, Ra I and Ra II, and tried to cross the Atlantic Ocean from Morocco. He and the other members of the expedition accomplished the task on their second attempt. In 1977, with the Tigris expedition, he attempted to sail from Egypt to the Indian Ocean and then down to the Horn of Africa, claiming that trade and migration could have linked Mesopotamia with the Indus Valley Civilization in what is now Pakistan. Heyerdahl was controversial and always confronting wellestablished scientific theories. As an author and conveyer of his own theories, he was remarkable. He held the rare quality of combining a dramatic story with knowledge and theory.

The Kon-Tiki Expedition: By Raft Across the South Seas (Kon-Tiki ekspedisjonen), 1948 In 1947 Thor Heyerdahl and five companions completed the daring and revolutionary journey by raft christened the Kon-Tiki expedition. Heyerdahl wanted to show that Polynesia could have been populated by South American Indians using balsa rafts as transport. The fascinating story of this journey was first published in 1948, became one of the twentieth century’s great international bestsellers, and has been translated into more than 70 languages.

Selected titles Pyramids of Tucume: The Quest for Peru’s Forgotten City (Pyramidene i Tucume), non-fiction, 1993 Green Was the Earth on the Seventh Day: Memories and Journeys of a Lifetime (Grønn var jorden på den syvende dag), non-fiction, 1991 The Tigris Expedition: In Search of Our Beginnings (Tigris: På leting etter begynnelsen), non-fiction, 1979 Fatu-Hiva: Back to Nature (Fatuhiva: Tilbake til naturen), non-fiction, 1974 The Ra Expeditions (Ra), non-fiction, 1970 Aku-Aku: The Secret of Easter Island (Aku-Aku: Påskeøyas hemmelighet), non-fiction, 1957 The Kon-Tiki Expedition: By Raft Across the South Seas (Kon-Tiki ekspedisjonen), non-fiction, 1948

Aku-Aku: The Secret of Easter Island (Aku-Aku: Påskeøyas hemmelighet), 1957 In 1955 Thor Heyerdahl landed on Easter Island, thus realising his old dream of investigating the island’s extraordinary giant statues. The expedition lasted a whole year, and the scientific results exceeded Heyerdahl’s wildest expectations. Aku-Aku: The Secret of Easter Island is the tale of their eventful stay on the island, filled with tension, mystery and events of intense drama.

Non-fiction

Helge Ingstad Helge Ingstad (1899–2001) was a scientist, an explorer, an adventurer and an author. Living for the entirety of the 20th Century, he made an impact paralleled by few other modern Norwegians. BORN IN Meråker, Ingstad wrote (now little known) poetry in his youth, before becoming a lawyer by profession. Always an outdoorsman, he decided to leave his successful law practice and go to Canada as a trapper. When he returned to Norway, he wrote the bestseller The Land of Feast and Famine (1931). He was the governor of Erik the Red’s Land in Greenland (1932–33), at that time annexed by Norway, and when it was decided that Greenland should belong to Denmark, the Norwegian government summoned him to the position as governor of Svalbard. During his Svalbard years, he wrote books about both Greenland and Svalbard. He went on an expedition to Mexico in 1937, searching for a lost Apache tribe, and stayed among the Nunamiut in Alaska and wrote about his expeditions and experiences. In 1941 he married Anne Stine Moe, an archeologist.

Through his stays in Greenland and Svalbard, Ingstad developed a strong interest in the Vikings’ daring expeditions across the oceans. This became the starting point for his scientific work in Greenland and Newfoundland, where, in 1960, he and his wife discovered what proved to be a Viking settlement at L’Anse aux Meadows, in the north of Newfoundland, Canada. They were able to prove that the settlement dated to around the year AD 1000, 500 years before Columbus reached America. Ingstad managed to combine scientific observations with exceptional storytelling. His books are characterized by great respect and humbleness for the natives and the adventurers who lived secluded from civilization, and for our ancestors, the Vikings. Helge Ingstad died in 2001, 101 years old.

The Land of Feast and Famine (Pelsjegerliv. Blant Nord-Canadas indianere), 1931 ”Here I have my canoe, my nets, my gun and my dogs. The forests, rivers and lakes are at my disposal. I sit in shirt sleeves in front of my tent and feel like a millionaire.” Ingstad’s 1931 debut takes place in arctic Canada, where he lived for four years as a fur hunter. The Land of Feast and Famine is the fascinating story of his experiences in the great wilderness. One year he lived as the only white man among a group of native Indians, and another year alone with his dogs while hunting for wild reindeer and wolves. The depiction of life here is tough and dangerous, featuring warm-hearted meetings with good, hardened people.

Titles The Viking Discovery of America (Vesterveg til Vinland. Oppdagelsen av norrøne boplasser i Nord-Amerika), non-fiction, 1965 Land Under the Polar Star (Landet under Leidarstjernen. En ferd til Grønlands norrøne bygder), non-fiction, 1959 Nunamiut (Nunamiut. Blant Alaskas innlandseskimoer), non-fiction, 1951 Land of the Cold Coasts (Landet med de kalde kyster), non-fiction, 1948 The Last Boat (Siste båt), play, 1948 Klondyke-Bill, novel, 1941 The Apache Indians (Apache-indianerne. Jakten på den tapte stamme), non-fiction, 1939 East of the Great Glacier (Øst for den store bre), non-fiction, 1935 The Land of Feast and Famine (Pelsjegerliv. Blant Nord-Canadas indianere), non-fiction, 1931

The Apache Indians (Apache-indianerne. Jakten på den tapte stamme), 1939 In The Apache Indians Ingstad depicts his fantastic journey through the inner mountains of Arizona and Mexico in the footsteps of the Apache Indians. Ingstad’s aim was to find a small, shy and hostile tribe that still lived in the Sierra Madre: ’the lost tribe’.

Ingstad managed to combine scientific observations with exceptional storytelling.

Non-fiction

Asbjørn Jaklin Asbjørn Jaklin (1956–) is one of today’s foremost mediators of the history of Northern Norway and the Second World War.

JAKLIN IS an author, journalist and former editor of the newspaper Nordlys. He debuted in 1999 with Natives of Northern Norway vol. 1, the first of two volumes composed of biographical pieces on renowned people from Northern Norway of the last thousand years. Most of all, Jaklin is known for his historical depictions and non-fiction, with particular focus on Northern Norway and the Second World War. The History of Northern Norway (2004) is a popular historical account of the region’s history over the last 120 years, and was very well received by both critics and readers. Ice Front narrates the history of the Cold War in the north, which for a long time has been ignored by war historians. The North Front – Hitler’s Line of Fate (2006) deals with the Murmansk front and Scandinavia during the Second World War, while Condemned to Death (2011)

digs in to the search for justice after the war. The retelling is based on archive studies, first and foremost from the criminal cases against those executed, and discusses how controversial the death penalty was at the time. Jaklin’s genius lies in his formidable processing of a vast source material: He presents his readers with books as well written as they are researched, juggling the broader picture of politics with highly engaging personal fates. In 2012 he published his first crime novel, Black Frost, where the action plays out in Tromsø. The book asks whether it is ever possible to achieve justice, and if there is such a thing as righteous vengeance. Red Zone and White Lies are the next books in the planned series, with the journalist and Afghan war veteran Alexander Winther as the central character.

Awards and nominations 2014: Rivertonprisen (nominated) 2006: Brageprisen (nominated)

Selected titles Scorched Earth: 1944–1945: the Heroes, the Victims, the Culprits (Brent jord: 1944–1945: heltene, ofrene, de skyldige), non-fiction, 2017 Condemned to Death (De dødsdømte), non-fiction, 2011 Ice Front: The Cold War in the North (Isfront: den kalde krigen i nord), non-fiction, 2009 The North Front – Hitler’s Line of Fate (Nordfronten : Hitlers skjebneområde), non-fiction, 2006

Scorched Earth (Brent jord), 2017 In the fall of 1944 Hitler ordered the forced evacuation of Northern Troms and Finnmark. Buildings were to be burned down, infrastructure destroyed, livestock slaughtered. 50,000 inhabitants were forcibly removed from their homes. 25,000 people refused the order, and not all of them survived a winter of wretched conditions. Asbjørn Jaklin describes the personal, political and military sides of the forced evacuation. Here we meet, among others,

Lieutenant Alfred Henningsen, who led a heroic fightback against the superior German forces; the head of the evacuation, Ragnar Hansen, who struck a balance between the orders of the Nazis and humanitarian concerns, and the manager of an orphanage, Ingertha Horsdal, who fled with 22 children over the mountains. What was the reason the Russians voluntarily pulled out of Eastern Finnmark? And how could it be that the German officer in charge, General Lothar Rendulic, was

able to walk free from justice at Nuremberg? In Scorched Earth, Asbjørn Jaklin provides the answers. The book is powerful, dramatic and ground-breaking on the subject of the traumas of war in Northern Troms and Finnmark. ”It is rare to come so close – through gripping, close portraits, most of them of ordinary people – to the drama and suffering that people in the northernmost region of the country must have gone through.” – Johan O. Jensen, Adresseavisen

PHOTO: KARI HOLTHE

Jaklinâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s genius lies in his formidable processing of a vast source material: He presents his readers with books as well written as they are researched, juggling the broader picture of the politics of the events he writes about with highly engaging personal fates.

PHOTO: MORTEN BRUN

As a biographer, Sletten Kolloen is meticulous in his methods, combining his abilities for unearthing and getting the most out of new sources, while shedding new light on old ones. With finely tuned artistic awareness and great dramatic intuition, he writes with empathy, in clear prose.

Non-fiction

Ingar Sletten Kolloen Ingar Sletten Kolloen (1951–) is one of Norway’s most prominent biographers.

BORN IN Gudbrandsdalen, Sletten Kolloen has worked as a publisher and journalist, commentator and newspaper editor. His first book was published in 1999, a critically acclaimed biography of Tor Jonsson called Only Love and Death, followed up by a selection of Jonsson’s short prose. In 2003 and 2004 Sletten Kolloen’s extensive, two-part biography on Knut Hamsun was published to great reviews, earning him a number of literary awards and a wide circle of readers. In 2008 he published a book about the healer Joralf Gjerstad, The Man from Snaasa, which sold more than 100,000 copies. He has also written the biographies of Queen Sonja and TV chef Ingrid Espelid Hovig, Norway’s Julia Child. When appointed as a professor

at Lillehammer University College, his lack of a completed formal education was explained thus by the committee: “These three books fulfill the three criteria upon which the opinion is based – solid science, a high level of artistry and pedagogical dissemination.” As a biographer, Sletten Kolloen is meticulous in his methods, combining his abilities for unearthing and getting the most out of new sources, while shedding new light on old ones. With finely tuned artistic awareness and great dramatic intuition, he writes with empathy, in clear prose. His works are filled to the brim with knowledge – a knowledge that is well handled and well presented. Sletten Kolloen now lives in Lillehammer.

Awards and nominations 2009: Kulturprisen for Gudbrandsdalen 2004: Den norske leserprisen 1999: Melsom-prisen

Titles The Empty Space in the Display Cabinet (Den tomme plassen i vitrineskapet), novel, 2015 Ingrid, biography, 2013 The Queen (Dronningen), biography, 2012 The Man from Snaasa (Snåsamannen), biography, 2008 The Fourth Angel (Den fjerde engelen), novel, 2007 I Could Have Cried Blood (Jeg kunne gråte blod), play, 2004 The Conqueror (Hamsun – Erobreren), biography, 2004 The Dreamer (Hamsun – Svermeren), biography, 2003 Love and Death Only (Berre Kjærleik og død), play, 2000 Love and Death Only (Berre kjærleik og død), biography, 1999

The Dreamer (Hamsun – Svermeren), 2003

The Conqueror (Hamsun – Erobreren), 2004

Knut Hamsun was the farmer’s son who wrote his way to world fame, influencing generations of European and American authors. He was the poet who created the new, modern novel – and was the leader who misled his people. Hamsun’s life is saturated with every component a novelist can dream of: an intense, never-before-told family drama, a political drama illuminated here in new ways – and the controversy of this artistic genius’ destiny in Norway.

The Conqueror is the story of the fall of Knut Hamsun. Once Norway’s most idolized and legendary author, he ends up as the most loathed and shunned, and his wife Marie and their children now have to pay the prize.

This is the most pertinent and comprehensive work ever written on Knut Hamsun’s life, and it is beautifully written. – Terje Stemland, Aftenposten

To Hamsun, writing like no one before him had done was the only thing that mattered, and when he could no longer write, he lost himself in the Nazi ideology – thus turning the public’s attention from his rich fiction to his shocking reality.

Non-fiction

Ragnar Kvam Jr. Ragnar Kvam Jr. (1942–) is a historian, journalist, adventurer and author. He has published a number of critically acclaimed non-fictional works.

FROM 1974 to 1987 he worked as a political reporter for the newspaper Dagbladet. In the 1970s he wrote several books on the political situation in Norway, and was particularly concerned with the situation of foreign workers. In 1978 he set out to sail around the world. In the three travelogues A Voyage on the Northern Quest, The Sea Has Me Now, and A Voyage to Siberia, he writes vividly and personally about the various stages of the trip. In recent years Kvam has written several interesting biographical works, among them The Third Man (1987) about the destiny of Hjalmar Johansen, the companion of explorers Scott and Amundsen. The book cast a whole new light on the circumstances surrounding Hjalmar Johansen’s conflict with Roald Amundsen during the expedition to the South Pole. With the help of new source material and with great psychological insight, Kvam told a story that had until

then been unknown to most. In The Punishment (1999), he recounts the fascinating tale of Knud Bull, brother of the worldfamous violinist Ole Bull, arrested for counterfeiting and sentenced to fourteen years of punishment with hard labor at a British penal colony in Australia. The Four Heroes (2000) is about the four great polar explorers Nansen, Amundsen, Scott and Shackleton, and analyzes how they led their expeditions. For the time being, however, Ragnar Kvam Jr’s greatest undertaking as an author has been his threevolume work on Thor Heyerdahl. He is the first biographer to gain access to all the documents the adventurer and scientist Thor Heyerdahl left behind. In 2013 he completed the biography of Heyerdahl with the third volume, The Man and the Myths, and was awarded the Riksmålsforbund’s Literature Prize

Thor Heyerdahl, vol. 1 - 3 2005–2013 This is the first complete biography of Thor Heyerdahl. The first volume focuses on the Kon-Tiki expedition. When the Kon-Tiki foundered on a reef by the South Pacific atoll of Raroia in August 1947, Thor Heyerdahl had completed the voyage of his life. He had shown that a raft of balsa wood could be pulled by the wind and weather from the coast of South America to Polynesia. In the second volume we follow Thor Heyerdahl on his journeys to the Galápagos

Islands, Easter Island and on the Aku-Aku expedition. Then came the Ra expeditions and Heyerdahl’s move from Norway to Colla Micheri in Italy. While undergoing private upheavals – divorce, remarriage, and a second divorce – Heyerdahl worked hard for the recognition of the scientific community. The third volume tells the story of how Heyerdahl launched his papyrus ship Tigris in the Persian Gulf and ended up setting fire to it half a year later.

Selected titles Thor Heyerdahl – The Man and the Myths (Mannen og mytene), biography, 2013 Thor Heyerdahl – The Man and the World (Mannen og verden) , biography, 2008 Thor Heyerdahl – The Man and the Sea (Mannen og havet) , biography, 2005 In the Mind of a Sailor (I hodet på en seiler), non-fiction, 2001 The Four Heroes (De fire store), non-fiction, 2000 The Punishment (Straffen), non-fiction, 1999 The Third Man (Den tredje mann – Beretningen om Hjalmar Johansen), biography, 1997 A Voyage to Siberia (En sjøreise til Sibir), travelogue, 1996 The Pursuit (Jakten), with Ola Thune, non-fiction, 1993 A Voyage on the Northern Quest (Oppbrudd. Beretningen om en lang sjøreise med Northern Quest), travelogue, 1990

PHOTO: MORTEN BRUN

He is the first biographer to gain access to all the documents the adventurer and scientist Thor Heyerdahl left behind.

His fascination for and profound knowledge of subjects such as language, art, history and mathematics can be found throughout his career in writing.

PHOTO: RANDI TELLESBÃ&#x2DC;

Non-fiction

Atle Næss Atle Næss (1949–) is the versatile and highly knowledgeable writer of a number of critically acclaimed works, both fiction and non-fiction.

WITH A background of study in English, Norwegian and linguistics, Næss has a predoctoral degree from the University of Oslo, and worked as a teacher before becoming a full-time writer. His first novel, the love story Gun, was published in 1975. Næss has a broad range, and has drawn acclaim from within a number of genres. His fascination for and profound knowledge of subjects such as language, art, history and mathematics can be found throughout his career in writing. He has authored novels for both children and teenagers, nonfiction, and several works of fiction, among them a crime novel. His work is often based on historical sources. In the fall of 2005 he traveled with his daughter, the language researcher Åshild Næss, to the Reef Islands, in Melanesia, in the Pacific Ocean, where Åshild was

due to study a local language. This collaboration resulted in the book A Sea of Languages. For the 200th anniversary of the Norwegian Constitution he wrote In the House of the Constitution, which dealt with how the ’Men at Eidsvoll’ composed the constitution in the space of a couple of months. It was originally written for children and teenagers, and in 2013 all new parliamentary representatives received a copy. He is most well known for his historical novels such as The Moving Force and Doubting Thomas (about the Italian artist Caravaggio), and for his non-fiction books on topics including Munch, Nidaros Cathedral and Gailieo Galilei. Furthermore, he has written books on Ibsen’s Italy, the ice skating city Hamar, and on hydroelectric power. Atle Næss was born in Mysen and lives in Ski.

Awards 2001: Brageprisen 1995: Gullboka (awarded by the Norwegian Women’s Reading Association) 1990: Sarpsborgprisen, Gyldendals Legat

Titles Martin Luther, biography, 2017 The Life and Times of Leonardo da Vinci (Leonardo da Vinci og hans tid), biography, 2014 In the House of the Constitution (I Grunnlovens hus), non-fiction for children, 2013 The Tentmaker (Teltmakeren), novel, 2012 Nidaros Cathedral (Nidarosdomen), non-fiction, 2011 Thy Neighbor’s Property (Din nestes eiendom), novel, 2009 The Root of Minus One (Roten av minus en), novel, 2006 Munch. A Biography (Munch. En biografi), 2004 Inside Curves (Innersvinger), novel, 2002 When Earth Stood Still. Galileo Galilei (Da jorden sto stille. Galileo Galilei og hans tid), biography, 2001 Doubting Thomas (Den tvilende Thomas), novel, 1997

Munch. A Biography (Munch. En biografi), 2004

Martin Luther 2017

Næss has written the first modern biography of painter Edvard Munch’s long life and outstanding career, an intense read offering insight into his life, art and times. Considered Norway’s greatest painter, Munch was a complex man, and this book is both a thorough and fascinating reflection upon his art, and an epic psychological drama. It is a book about art and love, strength and vulnerability, friendship and conflict, and about the women in his life. Well-written and well-told, perfectly balancing vast knowledge and accessibility, and richly illustrated with Munch’s art and photographs, Munch. A biography makes for a riveting read.

In this wide-ranging and richly illustrated biography of Luther the reformer, Atle Næss recounts the entire story of his life and sheds new light upon his work. Martin Luther was originally a Catholic priest but developed a strong opposition to the papacy in Rome. With the Ninetyfive Theses in Wittenberg, the break with Rome was irrevocable. With this work Næss again demonstrates both his instinct for language, his knowledge and his eminent storytelling skills.

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Non-fiction

Berit Nordstrand Norwegian physician and specialist in clinical pharmacology Berit Nordstrand (1966–) is devoted to studying the relationship between food and health. A love of good food and amazing tastes are as important as healthy eating in all her books. ALSO A certified cognitive therapist, Berit serves as chief consultant in a clinic specializing in the treatment of addiction. More than twenty years ago, when she was a young mother and recent medical school graduate, Berit’s young son faced numerous health challenges, including epilepsy and ADHD, and she sought out ways to use food to help him. Now, her son Petter is doing great, and Berit shares her results with the world on how the right food can bolster health and help us enjoy life to the fullest. A mother to six children between the ages of 6 and 22 years old, Berit is known for her inspiring talks and her passionate belief that everyone can enjoy the food they eat every day while reducing the risk of lifestyle diseases. The Scandinavian Belly Fat Program is a twelve-week plan containing 70 recipes to help you reduce unhealthy belly fat and live

a healthier life. It is Berit’s fallin-love-with-life approach to food that makes her belly fat program unique. We now know that it’s the fat around your belly, rather than anywhere else on your body, that is the most dangerous to your health. Belly fat causes problems for the liver, kidneys and heart and contributes to cardiovascular disease, asthma, migraine, rheumatism, cancer, depression and, of course, diabetes. For men, a healthy waist size measures less than 94 cm and for women, less than 80 cm. In this book Berit sets clear, short-term goals to help you to reduce your belly fat over 12 weeks. Her program is packed with facts on food and the body, and simple food tips, tricks and recipes that speed up the rate at which your body burns fat, increase your muscle mass and help you reach your ideal, healthy waist size.

Intestinal medicine (Tarmens medisin), 2017 Throughout her many years as a doctor, Berit Nordstrand has guided patients and families with children who have struggled with anxiety, concentration problems, ADHD and mental health issues. She has seen how an unbalanced stomach can affect behavior and the psyche, and how the condition improves when constipation or sensitive bowel gets treatment. With Berit’s 6-step method, you can change your intestinal flora and benefit from significant health gains.

Titles Intestinal medicine, (Tarmens medisin), 2017 The Best Smoothies in the World, (Verdens beste smoothier), 2017 Take Care of Yourself, (Ta vare på deg selv), 2016 The Scandinavian Belly Fat Program, (12 uker til et sunnere liv), 2015 A New Beginning, (En ny start), 2015 The World’s Best Family Cookbook, (Verdens beste familiekokebok), with Kjartan Skjelde, 2015

The Scandinavian Belly Fat Program (12 uker til et sunnere liv), 2015 Berit Nordstrand leads us through a transformation, a change in diet and in attitude that will ultimately enable us to lose that dangerous belly fat. Step by step this book tells us what to eat and what to avoid. This diet is not based on calorie counting, but on making a plan for how you can change your diet and fill your stomach with food that will increase your metabolism and safeguard your health.

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It is Beritâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s fallin-love-with-life approach to food that makes her belly fat program unique.

PHOTO: NINA AND JIM DREYER HENSLEY

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Non-fiction

Food and Drink Food and Drink is a key area in Gyldendal’s non-fiction department. From a rich selection of books, we present two books that take the concept of local food to the next level. Here it’s about eating what you can forage from nature, or even from your own garden.

From Nature’s Pantry Nina Dreyer Hensley, Anne Mæhlum, Jim Hensley

From the Garden Pantry Anne Mæhlum, Nina Dreyer Hensley, Jim Hensley

Nature is beautiful and you can take it home with you to eat! 54 wild plants and 89 recipes.

Eat your garden! This book presents 51 edible garden crops, with 88 accompanying recipes.

This is an inspirational book and a cookbook encouraging us to take a trip out into nature and enjoy all nature’s bounty of wild plants, berries and mushrooms. The book presents 54 edible wild plants found in nature. It shows how to use the different plants in meals, as spices or simply as garnishes. The book contains artful images of all the plants, photographed from above on a light or dark background, and an introductory text for each entry, making it easy to find (and easy not to be mistaken). The book contains 89 recipes.

Even if you do not have a large vegetable patch in your garden, many of the crops that already grow in the garden can be eaten. Rhubarb is not just a dessert – it can also be turned into chutney; marigolds can be sprinkled over a salad; dandelions make delicious jelly, and tulip leaves can be wrapped around cured salmon for a delicious appetizer. From the Garden Pantry is the follow-up to last year’s success From Nature’s Pantry, and comes from the same starting point and ambition: Eat the plants around you. Establish your own garden, along the road where you live, or in the neighbor’s garden! The book describes the garden crops so that they are not misunderstood, and presents them clearly, using the same plants in simple, proven recipes.

Anne Mæhlum has worked as an Art Director/designer and is now works as a food stylist. She has been an active forager and a passionate gardener throughout her life. Nina Dreyer Hensley and Jim Hensley are two of Norway’s foremost food photographers, in addition to which Nina is a passionate gardener and flower photographer.

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PHOTO: NINA AND JIM DREYER HENSLEY

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PHOTO: LENE-MARI PRÃ&#x2DC;VEN

Non-fiction

Knitting and crocheting Knitting and crocheting has again become trendy in Norway, and more and more people are discovering its joys – the younger generation included. Here is a small selection from our growing catalogue of books on the topic. Cool Stitches and Neat Seams Sidsel J. Høivik

Every stitch in a handmade garment is filled with love and consideration. They take time to make, but then they are guaranteed to last. Lose yourself in beautiful knitting patterns and wonderful photos in this year’s finest book on knitting. Cool Stitches and Neat Seams contains 50 knitting patterns for womenswear and a few matching outfits for children. You will find skirts, dresses, tunics, jackets, boleros, shawls, hats, mittens and bags. All the models are timeless creations achieved through a variety of techniques, mixing colors, trends, qualities and traditions.

Crochet a Friend Anette Andreassen

Welcome to a playful world full of happy colors and crocheted characters. Forget the crocheted oven mitts you started five years ago, and replace your children’s dolls with crocheted foxes and dinosaurs. Find your favorite, make your own twist and play around with the colors. These are guaranteed to be welcomed into the playgroup. Here you will find 35 plans for humorous animals and toys that will delight small and large recipients alike. The recipes are very detailed and you do not need any knowledge of crocheting. Learn how to crochet a stitch and you’re up and running. Before you know it, you’ll be inspired to follow your own path and create your own fantasy animals.

Knit Like the Wind Kristin Wiola Ødegård

Knit Like the Wind upgrades a number of easily made sweaters and other smaller and larger items for women, and gives them a more stylish twist. Several of these projects can feasibly be completed in a single evening or weekend, without intricate casting off or complicated joining. In Knit Like the Wind Kristin Wiola Ødegård has collected 44 of her most popular patterns: cardigans, sweaters, ponchos, dresses, skirts, hats, finger mittens and leggings. Her aim was to make a knitting book that would inspire readers to create simple garments suited to modern tastes.

Knitting Clothes for Small Children Marte Helgetun

Here you will find instructions for exciting, pretty and practical garments of all kinds, whether you are an inexperienced knitter sweating over your first creations or one of the more professional types who can enjoy a French movie while their knitting pins effortlessly do all the work on their own. Some of the garments are inspired by a classical style, others have a slightly retro feel, while others again have a more modern spirit. The patterns are marked by level of difficulty, to ensure that you don’t embark on a project you’ll never finish. This charming book is well suited for anyone who either has a child of their own, or knows someone who has.

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