Fiction_CLASSICS

The Birds might be Tarjei Vesaas’ masterpiece. No other character has been portrayed with as much care and empathy as Mattis. Helpless in everyday life and useless as a worker, Mattis in some ways still understands more than the sharper ones. Nature reveals secrets to Mattis. He can decipher the language of birds. He can read the letters that the woodcock writes to him with its beak and feet. And he can articulate the deepest questions of life: “Why are things the way they are?” he asks the friendly farmer’s wife who offers him coffee when he has again failed in doing the work he has been asked to do.

In 1967 The Birds was made into a film by the Polish director Witold Leszczynski.

“A tall, stork-like man” enters the night train on the central station in Oslo. He is the 32 year old composer Ask Burle, and he is heading home to bury his younger brother Balder. And there, in the shaking, darkened sleeping car, Ask starts searching his memories of lost times. From here, the captivating story of one of the greatest Norwegian post-war novels unfolds. It is a vital and tender knock-out of a novel.

‘If you’re lucky enough to get hold of a copy, Agnar Mykle’s Lasso Round the Moon (1954) might be the best book you’ve never read.’
- Lonely Planet’s guide to Scandinavia

Nothing Grows by Moonlight is the story of a young woman’s affair with an older man, and about her longing for love and intimacy. She gets pregnant, but instead of letting herself be humiliated, she rebels against an inhuman society.

In 2023, the book was named one of 10 books of a new canon for the left, next to works by Karl Marx, Simone de Beauvoir, John Steinbeck, Pierre Bourdieu and Frantz Fanon. It was the only book that made both the jury’s list and the top 10 list in the readers’ poll.

Imaginative and intelligent, Alberta is a misfit trapped in a stiflingly provincial town in the far north of Norway whose only affinity is for her extrovert brother Jacob. Combining mastery of style and characterization with brilliant descriptive writing, this powerful story of a young woman’s rebellion is universally regarded as one of the greatest novels to come from Scandinavia.

‘Ahead of her time . . . like Virginia Woolf though much tougher. A classic.’
- Times Literary Supplement

‘She has a place to herself among the finest contemporary writing.’
- The Guardian

One evening in Rome, in the beginning of the last century, two people meet in the street: researcher Helge Gram and painter Jenny Winge. They embark on an affair, and when they meet again in Kristiania, Helge introduces Jenny to his family. Helge’s parents are living in a sinister marriage, something Helge is clearly marked by. This becomes a heavy burden to Jenny’s and Helge’s relationship, and after a while, they split up. Jenny, however discovers that she has much in common with Helge’s father; something which in turn leads him to leave his wife. This new relationship is soon to have tragic consequences for Jenny’s life. Jenny, the novel that marked Undset’s breakthrough as a modern writer, is an intelligent novel about one woman’s dream of love and her tragic fight to make that dream come true. Undset reveals a truth that has been hard for the modern individual to accept; that there is no necessary connection between freedom and happiness.

Mysteries is a classic of European literature, one of the seminal novels of the twentieth century. It is the story of Johan Nagel, a strange young man who arrives in a small Norwegian coastal town in order to spend the summer. His presence acts as a catalyst, releasing the hidden impulses, concealed thoughts and darker instincts of the local people. Cursed with the ability to understand the human soul, especially his own, Nagel can foresee, but cannot prevent, his self-destruction.