Synopses & Reviews
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.
Synopsis
Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature for 2023
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 family and the 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 visionary masterpiece, a haunting exploration of love and loss that ranks among the greatest meditations on marriage and human fate.
Synopsis
From the 2023 winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, a haunting masterpiece exploring love, loss, and human fate.
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 family and the 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.
Synopsis
A visionary masterpiece from “the new Ibsen.”
Synopsis
What he writes is so simple and so deep at the same time. He has a restlessness, a tension in his narrative style, and he writes about situations everyonefeels involved in, no matter where in the world they are.Fosse . . . has been compared to Ibsen and to Beckett, and it is easyto see his work as Ibsen stripped down to its emotional essentials. But it is muchmore. For one thing, it has a fierce poetic simplicity.
About the Author
Called “the new Ibsen” in the German press, and heralded throughout Western Europe, Jon Fosse is one of contemporary Norwegian literature’s most important writers. In 2000, his novel Melancholy won the Melsom Prize, and Fosse was awarded a lifetime stipend from the Norwegian government for his future literary efforts.Damion Searls writes in English and has translated many of Europe's greatest writers: Rilke, Proust, Ingeborg Bachmann, Peter Handke, Nescio, Jon Fosse, Robert Walser, Kurt Schwitters, and others. He has received a Fulbright Fellowship, an NEA, and a PEN Translation Fund award; his most recent books are an abridged edition of Thoreau's Journal and a new selection and translation of Rilke's poetry and prose, called The Inner Sky: Poems, Notes, Dreams. His travelogue Everything You Say Is True appeared in 2004.