Boathouse

Jon Fosse

Original title: Naustet
Publisher: Samlaget, 1989
Genre: Novel
Pages: 126 pages

One of Jon Fosse’s most acclaimed novels, Boathouse is told from the perspective of an unnamed narrator leading a largely hermit-like existence until he unexpectedly encounters a long-lost childhood friend and his wife. Told partially in a stream-of-consciousness style and with an atmosphere reminiscent of a gripping crime novel, Boathouse slowly unravels the story of a love triangle leading to jealousy, betrayal, and eventually death.

Foreign rights

Danish Batzer
Swedish Bonniers
French Circé Editions
Estonian Eesti Raamat
Slovenian: Modrý Peter
English: Dalkey Archive

It is not necessarily the exterior, expansive drama that comes to determine our lives. Rather, it is the subtle, seemingly banal, and perhaps chance occurrences, that strikes us with consequences impossible to foresee or comprehend in dimension. Fosse convinces us of this, and it gives the novel unsettling perspectives.

Simen Skjønsberg, Dagbladet

Jon Fosse

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 finishing 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.