Nightsongs

Jon Fosse

Original title: Natta Syng Sine Songar
Publisher: Samlaget, 1998
Genre: Play
Pages: 37 pages

I don’t know what it is
that always makes something happen
But it must be something
Because something always happens
I don’t want anything to happen
and then something
happens all the same
(Translated by Gregory Motton)

They have a child and life changes. He can’t go out, and she can’t stay in the house. He writes words that no one will publish, and she takes a lover.

In Nightsongs we meet a young couple and heir newborn child. He writes words that no one will publish, becoming more and more isolated from each refusal. She finds the life they lead unbearable. One night she goes out and returns with a new friend. The Royal Court production of Nightsongs was dubbed ‘Waiting for Godot without the gags’.

Foreign rights

English, Swedish, German, French, Persian, Dutch, Kurdish, Czech.

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

“Painfully absorbing.”

Financial Times

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.