AshehougAgency

Novel 11, Book 18

Winner of the Critics' Prize 1992
Longlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize 2009

Bjørn Hansen, a respectable town treasurer, has just turned fifty and is horrified by the thought that chance has ruled his life. Eighteen years ago he left his wife and their two-year-old son for his mistress, who persuaded him to start afresh in a small, provincial town and to dabble in amateur dramatics. In time that relationship also faded, and after four years of living alone Bjørn contemplates an extraordinary course of action that will change his life for ever.

He finds a fellow conspirator in Dr Schiøtz, who has a secret of his own and offers to help Bjørn carry his preposterous and dangerous plan through to its logical conclusion. However, the sudden reappearance of his son both fills Bjørn with new hope and complicates matters. The desire to gamble with his comfortable existence proves irresistible, however, taking him to Vilnius in Lithuania, where very soon he cannot tell whether he's tangled up in a game or reality.

Novel 11, Book 18 is an uncompromising and concentrated existential novel that accommodates all of Dag Solstad’s fundamental themes, and for which he received the Norwegian Critics’ Prize for Literature for the second time.

Praise for Novel 11, Book 18:

"unexpectedly moving... [a] wry, fantastic book"
(Books of The Year, Irish Times, Eire)

"Brilliant and subtle… What matters is Solstad’s dedicated application to the mysteries of human conduct and relations that his town treasurer illustrates"
(Paul Binding, Independent, UK)

“Solstad is a terrific writer […] Novel 11, Book 18 is only the second of Solstad's works to be translated into English. There should be more.”
(Sunday Times, UK)

"[Solstad] is a master of irony, of pinpointing the little moments in life which trigger catastrophe; his characters, solid and believable, drift through a cold, hostile world, each unbearably unable to communicate with the other on almost any level. And yet his genius is that there are moments of laughter, and even of joy […] Solstad suceeds brilliantly in capturing the awkward, fluid motions of our puzzling lives. We should look forward to more translations."
(New Humanist, UK)

"As usual, Dag Solstad tells his story in a straightforward, swift and efficient manner, and in the same Solstadian way the existential pressure continues to rise around Bjørn Hansen – Solstad is in perfect command of the relationship between form and content. Eleventh novel, book eighteen is quite simply a masterpiece of a novel"
(Arbetet, Sweden)

”That an author who regularly gets fabulous reviews, has been awarded prestigious prizes, is read by many and whose books have been translated into several languages has not been translated into German until now – that is and will continue to be unfathomable”
(52 beste Bücher, Schweizer Radio DRS2, Germany)

”Ornate sentences which span whole pages testify to Dag Solstad’s great artistry and elegant irony”
(Buch der Woche, NDR, Germany)

”In Scandinavia, Norwegian Dag Solstad has long been one of the top authors, and this novel, Eleventh novel, book eighteen , is the first one available in German. Here he captivates the reader with the unaffected precision of his writing”
(Scwäbische Zeitung, Germany)

”With dissecting restraint, the Norwegian novelist Solstad masterfully tells the story of a man exploring life”
(Scweizer Illustrierte, Switzerland)

”Using deceptively undramatic effects, in Eleventh novel, book eighteen Solstad recounts a story which starts out in such an everyday way that it seems soporific, but which gets the reader glued almost like an insect to fly paper, before finally flinging him suddenly into the boundless freedom of futility … Solstad’s style is no less merciless than Ibsen’s … Right to the very end, which again reveals the affairs of humans in all their comic misery, Solstad’s glacial and supremely distanced prose is a strangely consolatory pleasure”
(Süddeutsche Zeitung, Germany)

”Strange that Solstad’s books have not been sold in German book shops before... He recounts with consummate succintness the life-story of Bjørn Hansen, the city treasurer”
(Allgemeine Hannoversche Zeitung, Germany)

”With ornate, somewhat coquettish, but consistently elegant sentences, Solstad constantly changes what has just been said as if it were a word game. He thereby manages to create the unique and somewhat ironic distance from the thoughts, assumptions and deliberations expressed, which is the hallmark of his prose”
(Neuen Züricher Zeitung, Switzerland)

First published: 1992, Forlaget Oktober
Dag Solstad: Biography and bibliography

Click here for English sample translation.

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