The Twentieth Day
Gulliksen, Geir: TjuendedagenA married couple gets involved with a third person, thereby entering into a seemingly liberating game with him. During the course of twenty days the three people develop a relationship, and possibly another way to understand each other and love.
In a student bedsit in 1985 a young aspiring writer decides to take her own life. Twenty years later an old acquaintance who thought she was dead comes to call on her. Only then she starts writing.
What happens when the dream of freedom is driven out of society and into the individual, all the way into the individual’s body? And what if self fulfilment merely means selling out cheaply? THE TWENTIETH DAY is a novel about private moments being made public and about public services being privatised, about Norwegian self understanding being expressed through sexuality.
THE TWENTIETH DAY is a controversial book and a beautiful and slightly different romance novel.
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Praise for The Twentieth Day:
"Gulliksen is a superb stylist. Fluent with details and precise, it is as if he twists and turns every word in a novel where just the words play a crucial part. (...) The novel is so annoyingly well composed and stylistically pure, it is tempting to single it out already as one of the great novels to read this autumn."
(Dagbladet)
"Gulliksen [proves himself] as an immensely skilled writer"
(Dag og Tid)
" The Twentieth Day by Geir Gulliksen draws convincing literary connections between sexual display and fundamental changes in society. (...) I read the novel as a continuation of Agnar Mykle's, Dag Solstad's and Vigdis Hjorth's best works. That is the level we are talking about. (...) Few novels have made a stronger impression on me the last ten years [than The Twentieth Day and Vigdis Hjorth's If Only]."
(Klassekampen)
" The Twentieth Day stands out from this autumn's books in a positive way by combining sex and societal criticism without trivialising it. In other words, worth reading."
(Bergens Tidende)
First published: 2009, Aschehoug Fiction
Geir Gulliksen: Biography and bibliography
