Boathouse

by Jon Fosse, May-Brit Akerholt (Translator)

Overview

Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature for 2023

One of Jon Fosse’s most acclaimed novels, Boathouse features an unnamed narrator who leads a hermit-like existence until he unexpectedly encounters a long-lost childhood friend and his wife. Part stream-of-consciousness metafictive exercise, part gripping crime novel, Boathouse slowly unravels the story of a love triangle to reveal a tale of jealousy and betrayal.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781628971828
Publisher:	Deep Vellum Publishing
Publication date:	11/17/2017
Series:	Norwegian Literature
Pages:	128
Sales rank:	312,004
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.20(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Jon Fosse has written over thirty books and twenty-eight plays that have been translated into over forty languages. In 2007, Fosse became a chevalier of the Ordre national du Mérite of France, and he was awarded the International Ibsen Award in 2010. In 2011, he moved into Grotten, an honorary residence for artists on the grounds of the Royal Palace in Oslo. He was awarded the European Prize for Literature in 2014 and the Nordic Council Literature Prize in 2015.

Born and raised in Norway, May-Brit Akerholt now lives in Australia, where she is a recipient of a Fellowship from the Theatre Board of Australia Council. She has translated numerous plays and is also the author of Patrick White.

Editorial Reviews

"In his radical reduction of language and dramatic action, [Jon Fosse] expresses the most powerful human emotions of anxiety and powerlessness in the simplest everyday terms." —Anders Olsson, chairman of the Nobel Committee at the Swedish Academy

"Fosse is our age's great writer of light and darkness." —Randy Boyagoda, New York Times

"To read Fosse's plays and novels is to enter into communion with a writer whose presence one feels all the more intensely owing to his air of reserve, his withdrawal." —Merve Emre, The New Yorker

“[A] perfect example of the ‘write, don’t think’ maxim as Fosse instructed his students in the late 80s in Bergen, when this book was in the making.” —Catherine Taylor, The Guardian

“[Fosse] shows a playwright’s flare for the carefully-orchestrated dramatic; Boathouse may feel almost entirely understated, even in its shattering conclusion… but it haunts deeply and profoundly.” —M.A. Orthofer, The Complete Review

“Deeply psychological.” —Norman Erikson Pasaribu, Asymptote Journal

“Jon Fosse is a major European writer.” —Karl Ove Knausgaard

“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

“[T]he oddity of reading Fosse [is that] what threatens to be heavy proves lightsome. You put on your boots to wade through the mud and find yourself floating along.” —Blake Morrison, London Review of Books

“I think of the four elder statesmen of Norwegian letters as a bit like the Beatles . . . Fosse is George, the quiet one, mystical, spiritual, probably the best craftsman of them all.” —Damion Searls, The Paris Review

“Fosse’s pared down, circuitous, and rhythmic prose skillfully guides readers through past and present.” —Publishers Weekly

“He is undoubtedly one of the world’s most important and versatile literary voices.” —Irish Examiner

“The Beckett of the 21st Century.” —Le Monde

“There is something quietly dramatic about Fosse’s meandering and rhythmic prose . . . which has a strangely mesmerising effect.” —The Independent

From the Publisher

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

Irish Examiner

"Norway's biggest cultural export"

Norwegian National Television (NRK)

"The Beckett of the 21st Century."

Le Monde

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

The Independent

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

Jon Fosse, the Norwegian Nobelist, writes in an interestingly elliptical style. His phrases and sentences loop around, repeating and echoing themselves, much the way many people think--and, in this audiobook, the way the protagonist avoids thinking about certain subjects that are too complicated and too painful for him to process neatly. The story is set in a coastal Norwegian village and involves a possible love triangle that never actually happened but has mysterious repercussions. Kåre Conradi gives a controlled performance that conveys the protagonist's hesitation, confusion, and flashes of passion that are sometimes, but not always, suppressed. He brings a difficult man, and a difficult story, vividly to life. D.M.H. © AudioFile 2024, Portland, Maine

MAY 2024 - AudioFile