New series from Jon Fosse: "Vaim"

New series alert from Jon Fosse! You’ll have to wait until next year to read the first book, but for now, we’re happy to share the first lines with you.

“So, I said, well here we are, I said and I ran my fingers through my beard, that graying beard, I wasn’t young anymore, definitely not, but I wasn’t an old man either, you could probably say aging, yes, an aging man, neither more nor less and now it was about time I stopped taking these little boat trips to Bjørgvin” (tr. Damion Searls)

Vaim (2025), Vaim Hotel (2026), and The Vaim Weekly (2027, all to be published by Samlaget) are set in a fictional fishing village in Western Norway and revolve around a Fossean cast of solitary fishermen, lost loves, animal companions, and boats. Each book is about different characters and can be read as a standalone series.

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 triangle is a book about little boats and big boats, love and death, passive men and an unusually determined woman. It’s no use trying to argue with Eline.

Vaim Hotel is a strange story about The Guest and a hotel owner named Brita. The Guest checks into the empty Vaim Hotel, where the commanding and powerful owner Brita holds sway in partnership with The Businessman. The Guest is tricked and lied to and goes from being a guest to working for Brita.

The Vaim Weekly is a story about a newspaper office. Even though The Vaim Weekly is published once a week, not much happens in Vaim, so the editor relies heavily on illustrated Obituaries. Working for the paper are a reporter named Sjursen, who doesn’t like talking to people; Guro, The Secretary, rumored to be having an affair with The Editor; and a reporter who takes his own life. When a new reporter is hired, The Editor himself is dead but still in the office, acting as if he were alive. From the editor’s chair, he sees himself walking on water, following other dead people out across the dark open sea.

The trilogy has already been purchased by Fosse’s English language publishers Fitzcarraldo Editions (UK) and Transit Books (US) in a pre-empt, with offers in for multiple other markets.

Read more about Transit (and listen to an interview with publisher Adam Levy) on Marketplace Business News.

Transit has also purchased the rights to Dog Stories, a collection of three novellas with canine protagonists, previously unpublished in English.

We’re thrilled about new work from our Nobel Prize-winner, who has been working hard on these manuscripts since before last year’s announcements.