Widely considered one of the greatest postwar poets in Norway, Tor Ulven (born 1953) was also one of its greatest innovators in prose, influencing countless other fiction writers, not least Jon Fosse and Stig S terbakken. Ulven committed suicide in 1995.Stig Saeterbakken (1966-2012) was one of Norway's most acclaimed contemporary writers. His novels include Through the Night and Siamese (also published by Dalkey Archive).

Replacement returns us to the rough ground underfoot, to reality as it is before we’re aware of it. Summer fields are soon replaced by fossilized skeletons, by driftwood, detritus, and all of life’s “deafening biological racket.” This too, Ulven tells us, is truth. The true world, a dying voice claims as the book closes, is one where “if we’d never been born it’d make no difference.” Like life itself, Replacement is full of both beauty and suffering. Finally though, it feels full of something far beyond both. It’s filled with as much of the blind will of the world as any book can capture. But what we learn from it is that we’re bound to the world, and that the world is what binds us together.

Widely considered one of the greatest postwar poets in Norway, Tor Ulven (born 1953) was also one of its greatest innovators in prose, influencing countless other fiction writers, not least Jon Fosse and Stig S terbakken. Ulven committed suicide in 1995.Stig Saeterbakken (1966-2012) was one of Norway's most acclaimed contemporary writers. His novels include Through the Night and Siamese (also published by Dalkey Archive).

Replacement returns us to the rough ground underfoot, to reality as it is before we’re aware of it. Summer fields are soon replaced by fossilized skeletons, by driftwood, detritus, and all of life’s “deafening biological racket.” This too, Ulven tells us, is truth. The true world, a dying voice claims as the book closes, is one where “if we’d never been born it’d make no difference.” Like life itself, Replacement is full of both beauty and suffering. Finally though, it feels full of something far beyond both. It’s filled with as much of the blind will of the world as any book can capture. But what we learn from it is that we’re bound to the world, and that the world is what binds us together.