Melancholy II
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Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature for 2023
Not so much a sequel as an alternate perspective, Jon Fosse's coda to his brilliant and much-lauded Melancholy picks up the story of tormented landscape painter Lars Hertervig in 1902, shortly after his death. Taking place, like Melancholy, over the course of a single day, it treats us to the thoughts of Hertervig's sister, carrying on with her life in the absence of her eccentric brother. She recalls their childhood under a domineering father, remembering Hertervig's difficulties fitting in, and likewise Hertervig the man: poors, always hovering on the brink, fanatical about painting and his own perceived shortcomings as an artist and human being. In the same hypnotic prose for which Fosse is famous, Melancholy II serves as an investigation not only into the "collateral damage" wrought by art and artists, but into a master's tools and obsessions as well.
Jon Fosse
Jon Fosse is the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature 2023. Jon Fosse's work includes novels, poetry, essays and books for children. He is one of the most produced playwrights in Europe and his plays have been translated into more than forty languages. Methuen Drama publishes Plays One (Someone Is Going to Come, The Name, The Guitar Man, The Child), Plays Three (Mother and Child, Sleep my Baby Sleep, Afternoon, Beautiful, Death Variations), Plays Four (And We'll Never Be Parted, The Son, Visits, Meanwhile the Lights Go Down and Everything Becomes Black), Plays Five (Suzannah, Living Secretly, The Dead Dogs, A Red Butterfly's Wing, Warm, Telemakos, Sleep), Nightsongs, The Girl on the Sofa and I Am The Wind. Fosse was made a Chevalier of the Ordre national du Mérite of France in 2007 and received The International Ibsen Award in 2010.
More by Jon Fosse
Eric Dickens
Translated by
Eric Dickens is a translator and reviewer of Estonian and Finnish-Swedish literature. He is currently translating work by the novelists Toomas Vint and Hannele Mikaela Taivassalo.
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