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Boathouse

Boathouse

Norwegian Literature

by Jon Fosse

Translated by May-Brit Akerholt

Published by: Deep Vellum Publishing

Imprint: Dalkey Archive Press

128 Pages, 5.50 x 8.50 in

Paperback
9781628971828
Published: November 2017

$15.00

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Praise

Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature for 2023

One of Jon Fosse’s most acclaimed novels, Boathouse is told from the perspective of an unnamed narrator leading a largely hermit-like existence until he unexpectedly encounters a long-lost childhood friend and his wife. Told partially in a stream-of-consciousness style and with an atmosphere reminiscent of a gripping crime novel, Boathouse slowly unravels the story of a love triangle leading to jealousy, betrayal, and eventually death.

Jon Fosse is one of Norway’s most celebrated authors and playwrights, and was awarded the 2023 Nobel Prize in Literature. He was born in 1959 on the west coast of Norway and is the recipient of countless prestigious prizes, both in his native Norway and abroad. Since his 1983 fiction debut, Raudt, svart [Red, Black], Fosse has written prose, poetry, essays, short stories, children’s books, and over forty plays, with more than a thousand productions performed and translations into fifty languages. Damion Searls is a translator from German, Norwegian, French, and Dutch and a writer in English. He has translated many classic modern writers, including Proust, Rilke, Nietzsche, Walser, Ingeborg Bachmann, Alfred Döblin, Jon Fosse, Elfriede Jelinek, and Nescio.

"There is something quietly dramatic about Fosse's meandering and rhythmic prose . . . which has a strangely mesmerising effect." ~The Independent

"The Beckett of the 21st Century." ~Le Monde

"Fosse’s pared down, circuitous, and rhythmic prose skillfully guides readers through past and present." ~Publisher's Weekly

"He is undoubtedly one of the world’s most important and versatile literary voices." ~Irish Examiner

“Fosse . . . has been compared to Ibsen and to Beckett, and it is easy to see his work as Ibsen stripped down to its emotional essentials. But it is much more. For one thing, it has a fierce poetic simplicity.” ~New York Times

"Norway's biggest cultural export" ~Norwegian National Television (NRK)

Boathouse

Norwegian Literature

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