“A newly published novel by my old friend Espen Haavardsholm, dealing with the meeting between the ageing genius Edvard Munch and his very last model, the Norwegian-English student Doffy.”
Photograph: © Tom Sandberg
Dag Solstad
Dag Solstad is the only author to have received the Norwegian Literary Critics' Award three times. His first novel to be translated into English, Shyness and Dignity, was shortlisted for the 2007 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize.
Tomas Tranströmer: Collected Poems (possibly selected), translated into Norwegian by Jan Erik Vold
This year's Nobel Prize winner is the Swedish poet Tomas Tranströmer. In deference to this choice, I have recently read his collected poems, in the version translated into Norwegian by my friend Jan Erik Vold. Tranströmer made his debut with the unique collection entitled '17 Poems' in the 1950s. I became familiar with his poetry in the middle of the 1960s because of great enthusiasm from my Norwegian contemporaries.
Witold Gombrowicz: Journals (1953-69)
Earlier this autumn I visited Buenos Aires for literary purposes, and then used the opportunity to read my old literary hero Witold Gombrowicz' journals from his period of residence in Argentina; in fact I dip into them constantly. The Polish avant-garde author arrived in Argentina by chance in the autumn of 1939, as an invited passenger on a Polish passenger ship which was opening up a route between Poland and Argentina. When the ship was due to return, on one of the first days of September 1939, Germany had invaded Poland and the Second World War broken out. Gombrowicz chose to stay in Argentina, and did not go back to Europe until 1963.
Espen Haavardsholm: Visit at Ekely
A newly published novel by my old friend Espen Haavardsholm, dealing with the meeting between the ageing genius Edvard Munch and his very last model, the Norwegian-English student Doffy. The novel builds on documented material from Oslo during the war years. Dorothy, whose real name is suppressed, shared lodgings with a female student friend, who is also drawn into the action of the novel. To the author's great surprise, it turned out that this friend was his own mother.
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Professor Andersen's Night by Dag Solstad, translated by Agnes Scott Langeland, is published by Harvill Secker.
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Monday, 5 December, 2011
In What I'm reading
- Dag Solstad
- Adam Thorpe
- Sarah Hall
- Yvvette Edwards
- Marika Cobbold
- Aatish Taseer
- Julie Myerson
- Annalena McAfee
- Meaghan Delahunt
- Colin Thubron
- Sunjeev Sahota
- Polly Samson
- Lydia Davis
- Rebecca Hunt
- Emma Donoghue
- Adam O'Riordan
- Robert McCrum
- John Simpson
- D. J. Taylor
- Thomas Trofimuk
- Robin Robertson
- The Editors
- Mary-Kay Wilmers
- Robert Service
- Penelope Lively
- Daniel Metcalfe
- Anna Richards
- Ross Raisin
- Charles Elton
- Melvyn Bragg
- Anita Shreve
- Steven Galloway
- Tom Hodgkinson
- Damon Galgut
- James Meek
- David Leavitt
- Diana Athill
- Gerald Martin
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