New Releases by Jon Fosse

Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature for 2023 A child who will be named Johannes is born. An old man named Johannes dies. Between these two points, Jon Fosse gives us the details of an entire life, starkly compressed. Beginning with Johannes''s father''s thoughts as his wife goes into labor, and ending with Johannes''s own thoughts as he embarks upon a day in his life when everything is exactly the same, yet totally different, Morning and Evening is a novel concerning the beautiful dream that our lives have meaning.

Includes the plays Suzannah, Living Secretly, The Dead Dogs, A Red Butterfly''s Wings, Warm, Telemakos and SleepIn their different ways, these plays are existential suspense stories, centred around a common concept of time. The past is recreated through present moments, the future hinted at through shared memories, yet experienced from different perspectives. Fosse''s drama explores life lived in unexpected ways, with a sense of otherness pervading the present and colouring the characters'' relationships.The whole life of Suzannah Ibsen unfolds as she waits for her playwriting husband to come home. In Sleep, one day captures the lives of a young woman and a young man as they grow into middle-age and old age. Living Secretly asks questions about how to live with and open up to one''s actions through sequences of time. In The Dead Dogs, lives are shockingly disrupted by an event that changes the directions of their future. Warm''s characters move back and forth through time to capture past images and actions, in an effort to make sense of the present. Telemakos reinvents an old classic from a contemporary point of view. Fosse''s damatic voice is full of poetic intensity, yet wryly ironic, and with a sense of the comedy of the human condition. Includes the plays Suzannah, Living Secretly, The Dead Dogs, Telemakos, Sleep and A Red Butterfly s Wings.

Includes A Summer''s Day, Dream of Autumn and Winter These three seasonal plays are typical Fosse, imbuing apparently mundane situations with an almost hypnotic intensity. In A Summer''s Day, an old widow remembers the day, many years before, when her husband went out to sea in a terrible storm. In a series of continuous but chronologically distinct scenes, Dream of Autumn shows a man unexpectedly meeting an old friend: she will become his second wife, and cause him to fall out with his family. In Winter a fascinating but mercurial woman tries to seduce a businessman, but once he has given up his family and career, he realises may have mistaken her intentions.

Includes the plays And We''ll Never be Parted, The Son, Visits and Meanwhile the lights go down and everything becomes black In And We''ll Never be Parted, Jon Fosse exploits theatre''s unique potential for ambiguity: as a woman anxiously waits for her husband, are we watching reality, fantasy, memory, or even a ghost story? The Son concerns an ageing and isolated couple, whose long-absent son has a score to settle with their meddlesome neighbour.In the oblique but psychologically penetrating Visits, a withdrawn teenager, apparently upset by the attentions of her mother''s boyfriend, turns to her brother for help. The short play Meanwhile the lights go down and everything becomes black, exploring the dilemmas of an errant husband, his young lover and his family, displays Fosse''s characteristic compression of theatrical time and space at its most concentrated.

Includes Mother and Child, Sleep My Baby Sleep, Afternoon, Beautiful and Death Variations Mother and Child is the intense journey of two individuals trying to connect. Like strangers on a first date, mother and son stalk each other, confronted with a shared history they cannot ignore. In Sleep My Baby Sleep, three people are in a strange unnamed place; through visual and linguistic association they try to decipher their predicament. In Afternoon, characters come and go in a flat that is for sale; they will never understand each other; someone will always insist on one thing, while others will insist on something else. In Beautiful, the past disrupts the present when a man and his family go back to his childhood valley. Conflicts simmer when husband and wife punish each other by courting his best friend, while his daughter meets a local boy. Death Variations explores different aspects of the theme of death; death of love, death of relationship, death of happiness, and finally the death of a young person. As the characters in Fosse''s plays search for meaning or even just familiarity in their ruptured lives, their struggles find an echo in the rhythms and repetitions of their speech.

Jon Fosse has been called ''the Beckett of the 21st century'' (Le Monde), and the Royal Court production of Nightsongs was dubbed ''Waiting for Godot without the gags''. Just as Beckett''s plays - and those of all great playwrights - grew out of their time, and influenced the current styles of drama, and were part of what brought their times forward, so do Fosse''s plays now. Fosse: Plays Six marks the culmination of this Norwegian playwright''s body of work for the stage to be published in the English language. The volume includes the plays Rambuku, Freedom, Over There, These Eyes, Girl in Yellow Raincoat, Christmas Tree Song and Sea. Rambuku: Two people. One finds it difficult to speak. The other attempts to understand. But what is Rambuku? Or who is Rambuku? Freedom: There is a sense of otherness in Fosse''s work that challenges our notions of a concept such as ''freedom''. This play questions if freedom, as we often understand it, is perhaps a prison. Over There: A woman follows a man to his death. But do they see the same images on the way to the top of the mountain? These Eyes: A snapshot of the dreamlike state of life. The characters exist in an in-between space which becomes their reality. Girl in Yellow Raincoat: An examination of our collective weakness, and the fragility of children. It asks questions about notions surrounding fear. Christmas Tree Song: A man celebrates Christmas alone (and reflects in a somewhat ironic way) on his life as he attempts to put up a Christmas tree. Sea: A group of people gathered in a kind of limbo, on a ship, disappearing into something unknown.

The essential lecture delivered by the 2023 Nobel Laureate in Literature, published for the first time in a collectible edition. "If there''s any metaphor I would use for the act of writing, it would have to be listening," says Jon Fosse in A Silent Language, the lecture he delivered after being awarded the 2023 Nobel Prize in Literature. When he writes, Fosse explains, he listens for texts that exist somewhere outside of himself in order to transcribe them before they disappear. With reverence and humility, Fosse traces his relationship to writing and celebrates the capacity of language to embrace the mystery, complexity, and existential uncertainty of the human experience. "It is only in the silence that you can hear God''s voice," he says, offering a key to his beloved works of drama and fiction. "Maybe."

Strange, haunting and dreamlike, A Shining is the latest work of fiction by Jon Fosse, ''the Beckett of the twenty-first century'' (Le Monde).

Melancholy I-II is a fictional invocation of the nineteenth-century Norwegian artist Lars Hertervig, who painted luminous landscapes, suffered mental illness and died poor in 1902. In this wild, feverish narrative, Jon Fosse delves into Hertervig''s mind as the events of one day precipitate his mental breakdown. A student of Hans Gude at the Academy of Art in Düsseldorf, Hertervig is paralyzed by anxieties about his talent and is overcome with love for Helene Winckelmann, his landlady''s daughter. Marked by inspiring lyrical flights of passion and enraged sexual delusions, Hertervig''s fixation on Helene persuades her family that he must leave. Oppressed by hallucinations and with nowhere to go, Hertervig shuttles between a cafe, where he endures the mockery of his more sophisticated classmates, and the Winckelmann''s apartment, which he desperately tries to re-enter - a limbo state which leads him inexorably into a state of madness. Published here in one volume in English for the first time, Melancholy I-II is a major novel by ''the Beckett of the twenty-first century'' (Le Monde).

Le héros de ce roman, Lars Hertervig (1830-1902), est aujourd’hui considéré comme un des plus grands noms de la peinture nordique. Très tôt, dès ses études à Düsseldorf, il fut victime de troubles nerveux. Après un séjour en asile, brisé, il vécut jusqu’à sa mort de charité publique. Comme s’il tentait de capter cette lumière qui illumine les toiles du peintre, avec une grande économie de moyens, une sorte de minimalisme emporté, Jon Fosse fait revivre le martyre d’Hertervig en deux monologues intérieurs où une écriture enveloppante, répétitive, rythmée, développe jusqu’à l’angoisse l’obsession amoureuse et la tresse cruellement à la volonté créatrice. Prix Nobel de Littérature 2023

Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature for 2023 Trilogy is Jon Fosse’s critically acclaimed, luminous love story about Asle and Alida, two lovers trying to find their place in this world. Homeless and sleepless, they wander around Bergen in the rain, trying to make a life for themselves and the child they expect. Through a rich web of historical, cultural, and theological allusions, Fosse constructs a modern parable of injustice, resistance, crime, and redemption. Consisting of three novellas (Wakefulness, Olav’s Dreams, and Weariness), Trilogy is a haunting, mysterious, and poignant evocation of love, for which Fosse received The Nordic Council’s Prize for Literature in 2015.

The celebrated Norwegian novelist’s magnum opus, shortlisted for the International Booker Prize, published in one volume for the first time. What makes us who we are? And why do we lead one life and not another? Asle, an ageing painter and widower who lives alone on the southwest coast of Norway, is reminiscing about his life. His only friends are his neighbour, Åsleik, a traditional fisherman-farmer, and Beyer, a gallerist who lives in the city. There, in Bjørgvin, lives another Asle, also a painter but lonely and consumed by alcohol. Asle and Asle are doppelgängers – two versions of the same person, two versions of the same life, both grappling with existential questions about death, love, light and shadow, faith and hopelessness. Jon Fosse’s Septology is a transcendent exploration of the human condition, and a radically other reading experience – incantatory, hypnotic and utterly unique. ‘Jon Fosse is a major European writer.’ – Karl Ove Knausgaard ‘The Beckett of the twenty-first century.’ – Le Monde ‘An extraordinary seven-novel sequence about an old man’s recursive reckoning with the braided realities of God, art, identity, family life and human life itself…the culminating project of an already major career.’ – Randy Boyagoda, New York Times ‘A major work of Scandinavian fiction …Fosse has written a strange mystical moebius strip of a novel, in which an artist struggles with faith and loneliness, and watches himself, or versions of himself, fall away into the lower depths.’ – Hari Kunzru ‘I hesitate to compare the experience of reading these works to the act of meditation. But that is the closest I can come to describing how something in the critical self is shed in the process of reading Fosse, only to be replaced by something more primal. A mood. An atmosphere. The sound of words moving on a page.’ – Ruth Margalit, The New York Review of Books

Asle is an ageing painter and widower who lives alone on the southwest coast of Norway. His only friends are his neighbour, Åsleik, a traditional fisherman-farmer, and Beyer, a gallerist who lives in the city. There, in Bjørgvin, lives another Asle, also a painter but lonely and consumed by alcohol. Asle and Asle are doppelgängers - two versions of the same person, two versions of the same life, both grappling with existential questions. In this final instalment of Jon Fosse''s Septology, the major prose work by ''the Beckett of the twenty-first century'' (Le Monde), Christmas is approaching. Tradition has it that Åsleik and Asle eat lutefisk together, but this year Asle has agreed for the first time to celebrate Christmas with Åsleik and his sister, Guro. On Christmas Eve, Åsleik, Asle, and the dog Bragi take Åsleik''s boat out on the Sygnefjord. Meanwhile, we follow the lives of the two Asles as younger adults in flashbacks: the narrator meets his lifelong love, Ales; joins the Catholic Church; starts exhibiting with Beyer; and can make a living by trying to paint away all the pictures stuck in his mind. After a while, Asle and Ales leave the city and move to the house in Dylgja. The other Asle gets married too, but his wedding ends with a sobbing bride and is followed soon after by a painful breakup. Written in melodious and hypnotic ''slow prose'', A New Name: Septology VI-VII is a transcendent exploration of the human condition by Jon Fosse, and a radically other reading experience - incantatory, hypnotic, and utterly unique.

The lives of an aging painter and his doppelganger converge and diverge in an elegiac meditation on our unlived lives, in the second book of the celebrated Norwegian writer''s three-volumeSeptology.

An elegiac meditation on our unlived lives, from the author of Scenes from a Childhood.

Bli kjend med Fosses dramatikk. Fosse hadde ein ekstrem dramatisk raptus frå tidleg i 90-åra og nesten tjue år fram i tid, og dramatikken hans femner om tjueåtte skodespel, åtte kortare stykke og tre librettoar. Men kva teaterstykke bør ein lese og kjenne til? Kor skal ein byrje? Jon Fosse har her valt ut fem av dei beste stykka sine, fem stykke som representerer ulike delar av den dramatiske produksjonen hans: "Nokon kjem til å kome", "Namnet", "Draum om hausten", "Svevn" og "Eg er vinden". "Nokon kjem til å kome" er det aller første teaterstykket Fosse skreiv. Stykka i denne boka er frå ulike tidspunkt i den dramatiske raptusen, fra. det første stykket Fosse skreiv i 1993, til "Eg er vinden", som hadde urpremiere i 2007. Her får vi både teaterstykke som i det ytre synest som realistiske familiedrama, og tekstar som er meir lyriske, eksperimentelle - nærmast teaterdikt. Jon Fosse har sagt at han skriv om livet, døden, kjærleiken og åndelege sider ved tilværet, og for han handlar dramatikk mellom anna om det usynleges nærvær. Karakterane er ofte historielause og namnlause, språket er kvardagsleg, musikalsk og repeterande. Boka har eit forord av den finlandssvenske skodespelaren Stina Ekblad. Her kan du bli ordentleg kjend med Fosses dramatikk!

A haunting collection from one of Norway''s most celebrated writers.

"A postmodern poet who successfully employed classic structures to exploit the range of possibilities inherent in the Slovenian language, this selection from the life''s work of Milan Jesih highlights his revolutionary approach to verse. Beginning with humor and autobiography and gradually withdrawing into a universe of fragments, quotations, dreams, and doubt, this collection offers English readers a first glimpse into the work of one of Slovenia''s literary treasures" --

A young man lives alone with his mother and his beloved dog in a house in a small village overlooking the fjord. The dog has run off and gone missing. This has never happened before... In The Dead Dogs, lives are shockingly disrupted by an event that changes the direction of their future. Fosse’s drama explores life lived in unexpected ways, with a sense of otherness pervading the present and colouring the characters’ relationships.

Not so much a sequel as an alternate perspective, Jon Fosse’s coda to his brilliant and much-lauded Melancholy, picks up the story of tormented landscape painter Lars Hertervig in 1902, shortly after his death. In the same meticulous and hypnotic prose for which Fosse is famous, Melancholy II serves not only as an investigation into the “collateral damage” of art, but into a master’s tools and obsessions. Taking place, like Melancholy, over the course of a single day, we are treated to the thoughts of Hertervig’s sister Oline, carrying on with her life in the absence of her beloved—if eccentric—brother. She recalls their childhood under a domineering father, recalls Hertervig’s difficulties fitting in, and likewise Hertervig the man: poor, always hovering on the brink, fanatical about painting and his own perceived shortcomings both as an artist and human being. In the same meticulous and hypnotic prose for which Fosse is famous, Melancholy II serves not only as an investigation into the “collateral damage” of art, but into a master’s tools and obsessions.

The wind gathers, rising up suddenly. Two men on a fragile boat, a trip to sea – a few drinks, a bite to eat – when one of them decides to push on to the open ocean. Suddenly there they are: among the distant islands, the threatening fog and gathering swell of the sea, bound together on an odyssey into the unknown. Jon Fosse’s work includes novels, poetry, essays and books for children. He is one of the most produced playwrights in Europe and his plays have been translated into forty languages. Oberon Books publishes Nightsongs and The Girl on the Sofa, and his other plays in the following collections: Plays One, Plays Two, Plays Three, Plays Four and Plays Five. Plays Six is forthcoming in 2012. Oberon Books also publishes The Luminous Darkness: The Theatre of Jon Fosse by Leif Zern (translated by Ann Henning-Jocelyn).

In her old house by the fjord, Signe lies on a bench and sees a vision of herself as she was more than twenty years earlier: standing by the window waiting for her husband Asle, on that terrible late November day when he took his rowboat out onto the water and never returned. Her memories widen out to include their whole life together, and beyond: the bonds of one family and their battles with implacable nature stretching back over five generations, to Asle''s great-great- grandmother Aliss. In Jon Fosse''s vivid, hallucinatory prose, all these moments in time inhabit the same space, and the ghosts of the past collide with those who still live on. Aliss at the Fire is a haunting exploration of love, ranking among the greatest meditations on marriage and loss.

Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature for 2023 "Melancholy" takes us deep inside a painter''s fragile consciousness, vulnerable to everything but therefore uniquely able to see its beauty and its light.

A girl sits on a sofa, not knowing what to do with herself. She argues with her mother and envies her older sister. She also longs for her absent father, a seaman. A middle-aged woman paints a portrait of herself as a young girl, sitting on a sofa, but she''s beginning to doubt her artistic ability. Still at odds with her sister and her mother and haunted by her dead father, she''s unable to shake the continuing presence of the past in her life... Jon Fosse''s new play, and this English version by David Harrower, were commissioned by the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh.

They have a child and life changes. He can''t go out and she can''t stay in. He writes words that no one will publish and she takes a lover. "I don''t know what it is/ that always make something happen/ But it must be something/ because something always happens/ I don''t want anything to happen/ and then something/ happens all the same."