Simplification

Her name is Kristin, and he calls himself Kim. They are both students, they start a life together, but they don’t make any friends, they don’t want anyone else. There is only the two of them. When Kristin becomes pregnant, they rent the first floor in the house of an older and more established couple who don’t have children. Here, their new life is to begin, in a house with a garden. The tone of this intense novel is condensed, disquieting, and the descriptions almost painfully intimate when Kim’s experiences are explored close up and what happens around him is incomprehensible.

Geir Gulliksen is an author and publishing editor. He is best known as a poet, but has also written essays, plays, novels and children’s books. He received glowing reviews for his last novel The Twentieth Day.

"A pregnancy thriller ... Geir Gulliksen writes up a sinister and strange core, in the midst of normality ... Simplification is a story with drive ... But make no mistake, this is complex, serious and relevant literature"
(Susanne Christensen, Klassekampen)

We can safely declare the author of “Simplification" as the most important figure in Norwegian contemporary literature today ... His novel [is] so good, so good, almost better than he has been given credit for: consummately created and shamelessly heartfelt at the same time.
(Riiser Trygve Gundersen, Dagbladet)

"Few Norwegian writers write so well about modern relationships as Geir Gulliksen. With his latest two novels he has, relatively quietly, stepped up as one of the most important voices in Norwegian contemporary literature ... Gulliksen writes exceptionally, and with extreme beauty and sensibility towards his male characters ... In his ideal fashion Gulliksen writes with a quivering excitement, or rather: a rising unrest, in a text that outwardly is about trivial everyday life. Pregnancy becomes the source of literary explosives, both prior to and during the actual birth ... Simplification is a rich text, with a distinctive intensity. Gulliksen writes so insightfully that it is sometimes a little frightening; I feel that my own deepest thoughts are revealed. I think this exposure might affect more people that just me? It is certainly a book that deserves many readers”
(Alf Kjetil Walgermo, Vårt land)

First published: 2010, Aschehoug Fiction
Geir Gulliksen: Biography and bibliography