A SHINING
by JON FOSSE
Translated from the Norwegian by Damion Searls
2023 NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE
In Fosse's first novel since his critically acclaimed Septology, a man starts driving without knowing where he is going. He alternates between turning right and left, and ultimately finds himself stuck at the end of a forest road. It soon grows dark and begins to snow. But instead of searching for help, he ventures, foolishly, into the dark forest. Inevitably the man gets lost, and as he grows cold and tired, he encounters a glowing being amid the obscurity. Strange, haunting and dreamlike, A Shining is the latest work of fiction by National Book Award-finalist Jon Fosse, “the Beckett of the twenty-first century” (Le Monde).
PRAISE FOR A SHINING
"Fosse follows up the voluminous Septology with the hypnotic story of a man lost in remote Norwegian woods... Fosse fans will savor this assured monologue of ethereal events."—Publishers Weekly
PRAISE FOR SEPTOLOGY
“Septology is the only novel I have read that has made me believe in the reality of the divine, as the fourteenth-century theologian Meister Eckhart, whom Fosse has read intently, describes it: 'It is in darkness that one finds the light, so when we are in sorrow, then this light is nearest of all to us.' None of the comparisons to other writers seem right. Bernhard? Too aggressive. Beckett? Too controlling. Ibsen? 'He is the most destructive writer I know,' Fosse claims. 'I feel that there’s a kind of—I don’t know if it’s a good English word—but a kind of reconciliation in my writing. Or, to use the Catholic or Christian word, peace.’”—Merve Emre, The New Yorker
“An extraordinary seven-novel sequence about an old man’s recursive reckoning with the braided realities of God, art, identity, family life and human life itself… The books feel like the culminating project of an already major career.”—Randy Boyagoda, The New York Times
“With Septology, Fosse has found a new approach to writing fiction, different from what he has written before and—it is strange to say, as the novel enters its fifth century—different from what has been written before. Septology feels new.”—Wyatt Mason, Harper's
“I hesitate to compare the experience of reading these works to the act of meditation. But that is the closest I can come to describing how something in the critical self is shed in the process of reading Fosse, only to be replaced by something more primal. A mood. An atmosphere. The sound of words moving on a page.” —Ruth Margalit, The New York Review of Books
“In The Other Name's rhythmic accumulation of words, [there is] something incantatory and self-annihilating—something that feels almost holy.”—Sam Sacks, The Wall Street Journal
“It ties 2666 by Roberto Bolaño as my favorite book from the 21st century… What I read was nothing less than a desperate prayer made radiant by sudden spikes of ecstatic beauty.”—Lauren Groff, Literary Hub
“The Other Name trembles with the beauty, doubt, and gnostic weariness of great religious fiction. In Fosse’s hands, God is a difficult, pungent, overwhelmingly aesthetic force, ‘the invisible inside the visible.’”—Dustin Illingworth, The Nation
"Fosse’s portrait of intersecting lives is that rare metaphysical novel that readers will find compulsively readable.”—Publishers Weekly, Starred Review
“Fosse’s fusing of the commonplace and the existential, together with his dramatic forays into the past, make for a relentlessly consuming work: already Septology feels momentous.”—The Guardian
“Its striking characters and whiplash prose make for compulsive reading, engrossing from the start, unforgettable at the end.”—World Literature Today
“Fosse has written a strange mystical moebius strip of a novel, in which an artist struggles with faith and loneliness, and watches himself, or versions of himself, fall away into the lower depths. The social world seems distant and foggy in this profound, existential narrative, which is only the first part of what promises to be a major work of Scandinavian fiction.” —Hari Kunzru, author of White Tears
“Jon Fosse is a major European writer.”—Karl Ove Knausgaard, author of My Struggle
“Masterful ... From the very first word, I wanted to read the book straight through in one go. ... A brilliant novel. ... Fosse’s way of “painting” pictures in words is gripping and truly different from what can be found in any other literature. ... A simplified universe full of wonder, intensity, and warm humor.”—Gro Jørstad Nilsen, Bergens Tidende
“Only Jon Fosse can write like this! ... New readers who want to experience true art have reason to rejoice over The Other Name: Septology I-II. The first part of Fosse’s long-awaited magnum opus Septology is here. And Fosse delivers: he creates pictures in words and voices like no one else. An underlying feeling of something fragile and precious is what drives the action, as if breakdown and despair were constantly threatening, just below the surface.”—Sindre Hovdennak, VG
“Jon Fosse’s prose is so musical that it can give meaning to the mere keeping of time. ... A magnificent reading experience.”—Vidar Kvalshaug, BOK365
“One of his richest and warmest novels. ... Radiant literature.”—Terje Eidsvåg, Adresseavisen
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