A Shining

A Shining

Jon Fosse

Original title: Kvitleik
Publisher: Samlaget , 2023
Genre: Novel
Pages: 70 pages

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A man is driving, without knowing where he’s going. He turns left and turns right, alternately, and finally enters a forest on road grooved with deep ruts. He doesn’t stop until the car gets stuck in the mud, unable to move forward or back. It starts snowing, gets dark and cold, but instead of going for help, the man walks down a path in the forest—even though it has already gotten so dark that he can hardly see a thing among the trees; even though he thinks this is a foolish thing to do.

“I’ve probably never done anything worse than this, get my car stuck and then go looking for help in the woods, how could I think I would find any help in the woods, deep in the dark woods, just because of an idea, no, it’s totally wrong to call it an idea, it was more like an impulse, something like that, something that just popped into my head. Foolishness, that’s what it was. Pure folly. Stupidity. Sheer stupidity.”

A Shining (Kvitleik) is a brilliant novel about the border between life and death.

In the spring of 2023, Jon Fosse will publish both the story A Shining (Kvitleik) and the play In a Dark Forest: two linked texts, like several other pairs of fiction works and plays from throughout his career.

Foreign rights

Danish: Batzer & Co
Dutch: Uitgeverij Oevers
World English: Fitzcarraldo editions
English NA/Canada: Transit Books
Serbian: Treci Trg
Swedish: Bonniers förlag

Jon Fosse

Portrait jon fosse septology
Photo: Tom A. Kolstad

Jon Fosse is widely considered one of the world’s most important living writers. Born in 1959 in Strandebarm, a small village in the western part of Norway, he lives today in the Grotten, an honorary residence, as well as in Hainburg, Austria, and Frekhaug, Norway.

Fosse has received numerous prizes, both in Norway and internationally, and he is mentioned increasingly often as a likely contender for the Nobel Prize. He has currently finished a major seven-volume work of what he calls “slow prose”. Septology consists of three volumes: The Other Name: Septology I – II was published in 2019 to international praise and longlisted for the Booker International Prize. I Is Another: Septology III – V was published autumn 2020 and A New Name: Septology VI – VII in September 2021.

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Other titles by Jon Fosse

Someone Is Going to Come

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1996
Plays 1 - 5

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20016
Morning and Evening

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2000
Collected Essays

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2011
I Am the Wind

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2008
Plays 5

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2016
Nightsongs

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1998
Boathouse

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1989
Dream of Autumn

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1999
Plays 3

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2005
Plays 2

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2001
Little Sister

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2000
Living Rock

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2015
Stone to Stone

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2013
The Fiddler Girl

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2009
The Dog Manuscripts

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2018, (1995, 1996, 1997)
Collected Poems

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2001
Kant

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1990
The Name

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1995
Shorter Prose

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2011
Plays 4

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2009
Plays 1

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1999
Trilogy

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2014
Melancholy I - II

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1995, 1996