"Black Dog" and "Vaim" chosen as NORLA Selected Titles for Autumn 2025

Every six months, NORLA selects Norwegian books of current interest for book fairs and literary events. Ida Frisch’s Black Dog and Jon Fosse’s Vaim were chosen for this autumn!

Ida Frisch and Black Dog are the newest additions to Winje Agency, and we couldn’t be prouder that this incredible book was chosen.

The family lives on a small, desolate island at the farthest edge of the fjord. When the mother drowns under mysterious circumstances, the father, daughter, and son must go on alone. Life on the island is simple: there is the house and the sea, there are the sheep and the fish, and there is God’s grace in every kind of weather. The sea gives and the sea takes—and it’s been this way as long as the son can remember. But a new era is approaching: a factory is being built on the mainland, and soon there will be no use for the people living out on the islands.

Faith in God and faith in the future are at odds, as is the space nature itself takes in their lives. After all, what is the true value of a world at the edge of the sea, and what is the cost of a new, shared vision of the future?

In this concentrated yet expansive family chronicle, Frisch reinvents the classic Norwegian coastal tale for our time. Black Dog is a luminous novel about faith and future, about longing and resilience, and about what remains when life at the edge of the ocean finally comes to an end.

It may come as no surprise that Vaim, Jon Fosse’s first novel since his Nobel Prize in 2023, was selected, but that doesn’t mean we’re any less delighted.

Vaim is the first of three books about the fictional small town of Vaim: Vaim, Vaim Hotel, and The Vaim Weekly. Each book is about different characters.

As Vaim opens, Jatgeir has come from Vaim to the big city, Bjørgvin, on his boat, Eline. He wants to buy a needle and thread but is cheated – twice. Yet strangely, he finds and comes home with Eline herself, the long-lost love of his teenage years, who has left her husband Frank. The story of this love triangle is a book about little boats and big boats, love and death, passive men and an unusually determined woman. There’s no use trying to argue with Eline.

Congratulations to both of these amazing authors!