I Am the Wind

Jon Fosse

Original title: Eg er vinden
Publisher: Samlaget, 2008
Genre: Play

I Am The Wind is a tale of enduring humanity against insurmountable odds. Two lifelong travelling companions are bound together on a journey across a vast ocean. At once moving and comic, this new work by one of Europe’s most widely performed playwrights dramatises the endless struggle to be human.

In I Am The Wind Fosse returns to a fundamental core of his authorship: Two friends parting ways. One character moves on or passes away, leaving the other behind to remember. In this play, the first character returns. Or does he?

Foreign rights

English, German, Spanish.

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 is a master of dialogue … It is not surprising that Jon Fosse is one of the leading contemporary dramatists in Europe, and the second most played Norwegian dramatist after Ibsen.”

Margoth Hovda-Lien, Nordlys

“However you interpret it, the play grips because it appeals to something fundamental: it shows two cornered human beings in an extreme situation and demonstrates the power of love.”

Michael Billington, The Guardian.

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.