Dream of Autumn

Jon Fosse

Original title: Draum om hausten
Publisher: Samlaget, 1999
Genre: Play
Pages: 159 pages

Dream of Autumn is a love story and a family drama. In a seemingly serendipitous moment, a man and a woman meet in a graveyard. They knew one another in a past life, and perhaps carried a longing for each another. A whole new life unfolds after the encounter, tense new scenes including the two of them, his ex-wife and his parents drive the narrative, with the presence of death giving contour to the love and life within the play. Dream of Autumn is a timeless poetic story about ‘the everyday’ and miraculous.

Dream of Autumn had its premiere at the National Theatre in Oslo, in the autumn of 1999. Since then the play has been produced in more than 20 countries in four continents.

Foreign rights

German, Portuguese, Swedish, Romanian, Polish, French, Ukrainian, Dutch, Italian, Czech, Korean, Chinese.

Awards

Among others:
2007 Deutsche Jugendbuch Preis.
2010 International Ibsen Prize
2014 European Prize for Literature
2015 Nordic Council’s Literature Award, for Trilogy
2016 Willy Brandt Prize
2017 European Poetry Prize of the City of Münster, Germany

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 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.