Scenes from a Childhood WINNER OF THE 2023 NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE

The Beckett of the twenty-first century. Le Monde Jon Fosse is a major European writer. Karl Ove Knausgaard, author of My Struggle Jon Fosse is less well-known in America than some other Norwegian novelists, but revered in Norway winner of every prize, a leading Nobel contender. I think of the four elder statesmen of Norwegian letters as a bit like the Beatles: Per Petterson is the solid, always dependable Ringo; Dag Solstad is John, the experimentalist, the ideas man; Karl Ove Knausgaard is Paul, the cute one; and Fosse is George, the quiet one, mystical, spiritual, probably the best craftsman of them all... His writing is pure poetry. Paris Review, from an essay by the translator 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 With its heavy silences and splintered dialogue, his work has reminded some of Beckett, others of Pinter. Guardian Fosses prose ... builds out of an ambiguity and sparseness and moves with a slow poetic intensity.... The collection has all the hallmarks of Fosses signature brooding manner where lyrical precision is used to paint unmoored psyches. An accumulation of moments when our essential emotions come into conflict with experience, Scenes from a Childhood is a welcome if overdue introduction to a singular literary voice. Tank Fosse writes about the complexity and danger of the bleak Norwegian countryside as well as he writes about the passage of time through a life. In choosing to mostly focus on pieces about childhood, Searls has been able to show an impressive side to Fosse, because in my experience at least writing engaging prose about childhood trips up many otherwise competent writers.... Fosse understands that a childs mind is not merely the mind of an ignorant adult, it is a different form of consciousness entirely: more curious, more optimistic, less scared.... There are portraits of great happiness, great pleasure and great joy in Scenes From A Childhood. Berfrois

Jon Fosse 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, childrens books, and over forty plays, with more than a thousand productions performed and translations into fifty languages. A New Name, the final volume in Septology, his latest prose work, will be published in 2021 by Fitzcarraldo Editions.