Kristin Vego

Fading Light

Sent på dagen

How do I go about describing this time? The small pockets of time where there were no other witnesses: It’s these I want to pick up, like jellyfish, and hold to the light. See the filaments inside.

Johanne rents a room in a white house in the countryside. Almost without noticing, she slips into a relationship with Mikael, the man who lives there. It develops into a love lasting a lifetime. With the relationship comes Mikael’s daughter, his ex-wife, and the characteristic landscape surrounding them. Seventeen years later, Johanne sits in the house alone, beginning to pen down their story as the days grow shorter and autumn turns to winter.

Fading Light is a novel about the cycles of the female body, about the fear of losing the one you love, and about appreciating the here-and-now fully; a delicate and powerful exploration of the threads that tie us to a place and to each other.

‘A remarkably good novel. […] especially the ability to write forth a characteristic atmosphere and mood, a mellow elegy of a time and a relationship that has faded to dust, makes an impact. Descriptions of the ways that humans and nature interact is another literary vein that makes Vego’s novel stand out.’

Morgenbladet

‘Hitting the nail on the head with her first novel. […] In her first novel, Danish-Norwegian Kristin Vego (32) demonstrates an unmistakable talent for both atmosphere and suspense. Fading Light is packed with effortless literary references as well as gorgeous metaphors […] Melancholy, absolutely, but Kristin Vego’s descriptions of passing time and changing seasons are more than anything brimming with beauty.’

Aftenposten
Photo: Birgit Solhaug

Kristin Vego (f. 1991) is a Danish-Norwegian author from Aarhus, Denmark, living in Oslo. She made her debut in 2021 with the short story collection Look Your Last on All Things Lovely. The book was published in Danish in 2022. For her debut, she was awarded the Tarjei Vesaas Debut Prize in Norway and the Bogforum Debut Prize in Denmark. Vego is a former editor of the literary magazine Vagant and a literary critic in Dagbladet Information. Fading Light is her first novel.