A Shining

Fosse uses fleeting allusions to a world beyond the reach of the narrator to explore some of humanity’s most elusive pursuits, certainty and inviolability among them. His bracingly clear prose imbues the story’s ambiguities with a profundity both revelatory and familiar.

The New Yorker

A Shining can be read in many ways: as a realistic monologue; as a fable; as a Christian-inflected allegory; as a nightmare painstakingly recounted the next morning, the horror of the experience still pulsing under the words, though somewhat mitigated by the small daily miracle of daylight. I think the great splendour of Fosse’s fiction is that it so deeply rejects any singular interpretation; as one reads, the story does not sound a clear singular note, but rather becomes a chord with all the many possible interpretations ringing out at once.

The Guardian

With A Shining, Jon Fosse has written a short masterpiece about death. A Shining is, simply put, great literature.

Dagbladet

Jon Fosse gives his aesthetic side free rein in a strange and beautiful story about a man whose car gets stuck in the snow. In the end, you don’t read Fosse to decipher his symbols, but to be reminded of how wondrous our reality really is—beautiful and painful at once—and to take a step back, out of respect for the mystery.

Morgenbladet

If you’re looking for winter reading one evening while the snow melts, A Shining is an excellent choice. You can feel the cold, see the snow, fear the coming darkness. Then discover something completely new in a second reading—a new image, a new association, even a bit of humor.

Dagsavisen

Jon Fosse has already set the bar high for this year in Norwegian fiction. […] There is a lot of concentrated power and depth in this bouillon cube of a story. A Shining is like a concise echo of the masterpiece Septology.

VG