"I have always known that writing can save lives, said the Norwegian author Jon Fosse in his speech accepting the 2023 Nobel prize in literature. And if my writing also can help to save the lives of others, nothing would make me happier. Rare is the novelist who talks in such language these days: fiction tends to know its modest place."
"Fosse, who is also a poet and an essayist, and one of the most widely performed playwrights in the world, follows his own path. A case in point: Septology (2019-2021), published across three volumes, running to more than 800 pages, containing a single sentence. Forget formalism, though; his fictions, often set in fjordic Norway, are disintegration loops, quiet and incantatory, emotionally overwhelming. At fewer than 120 pages, Vaim, his first new work since winning the Nobel, is a wisp of a thing."
Vaim is a slender, three-part novella narrated by three different characters and centered on Jatgeir, a solitary man from Vaim. Jatgeir sails to Bjørgvin to buy a needle and thread to replace a missing button and endures being grossly overcharged for a single spool. He seethes silently, returns to his parents' house where he lives alone, and recalls a secret youthful love, Eline. On the night of his humiliation, Eline calls him and asks to be rescued from her fisher husband. The narrative employs a quiet, incantatory tone and conveys emotional disintegration through small, ordinary events.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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