Morning and Evening

Jon Fosse The Nobel Prize

Original title: Morgon og kveld
Publisher: Samlaget, 2000
Genre: Novel
Pages: 117 pages

A child is born: he will be named Johannes and he will be a fisherman. An old man dies: his name is Johannes and he was a fisherman. This novel, written with the concentrated power of poetry, spans these two extremes of a human life, its language entering into the very process of being born and that of dying, when everything remains the same and yet is completely different. Between these two points, Jon Fosse gives us the details of an entire life, starkly compressed. Beginning with Johannes’s father’s thoughts as his wife goes into labor, and ending with Johannes’s own thoughts as he embarks upon a day in his life when everything is exactly the same, yet totally different, Morning and Evening is a novel concerning the beautiful dream that our lives have meaning.

Foreign rights

Arabic (Egypt): Al-Karma
Azerbaijan: Qanun
Belarus: Technalohija Publisher
Brazil: Zain
Chinese (simplified): Yilin Press
Croatian: Naklada Ljevak
Czech: Pistorius & Olsanska
Danish: Batzer & Co
English: Dalkey Archive / Deep Vellum
Faroese: Sprotin
Farsi: Whale Publishing
Finnish: WSOY
French: Editions Circé
German: Rowohlt Verlag
Georgian: Aprili
Hebrew: Hakkibutz Hameuchad
Hungarian: Kalligram
Icelandic: Dimma
Italian: La Nave di Teseo
Japanese: Kokusho Kankokai Inc.
Korean: Munhakdonge
Lithuanian: Leidykla AUKSO ŽUVYS
Macedonian: Art Connect
Portuguese: Cavalo de Ferro
Serbian: Trecí Trg
Spanish: Nórdica / De Conatus
Swedish: Bonniers
Turkish: Monokl
Vietnam: Rainbow

Awards

Melsom Prize for best Nynorsk book
Nominated for Nordic Council Prize for Literature
Nominated for Norwegian Critics Prize for Literature

“Morning and Evening is a simple story about life’s most important questions—in fact, about nothing less than the meaning of life itself. Fosse conveys his speculations in profound and truly gripping language. It is almost impossible not to be brought deep into Johannes the fisherman’s world.”

Tone Solberg, Dagens Næringsliv

“Jon Fosse has been compared to Ibsen and to Beckett, and it is easy to see his work as Ibsen stripped down to its emotional essentials. But it is much more.”

The New York Times

“A masterful short novel.”

Terje Eidsvåg, Adresseavisen

Jon Fosse

Photo: Agnete Brun

Nobel Prize-winner Jon Fosse (b. 1959), is widely considered one of the most important writers of our time. For almost forty years, he has written novels, plays, poems, stories, essays, and children’s books. His award-winning work has been translated into more than fifty languages and his plays have been staged over a thousand times all over the world.

Jon Fosse grew up in Strandebarm, a small village in the western part of Norway, he now lives in the Grotten, an honorary residence in Oslo, as well as in Hainburg, Austria, and Frekhaug, Norway.

Fosse was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2023 and has received numerous prizes, both in Norway and internationally through the years.