Georg Grosz meets Mulysses at Slush Mountain
Modern illustration from Norway

2019 is Norway’s year as Guest of Honour at Frankfurter Buchmesse, and the first event in this Guest of Honour year will be the touring exhibition "Georg Grosz meets Mulysses on Slush Mountain. Modern illustration from Norway.” The exhibition will open at Felleshuset, at the Norwegian Embassy in Berlin, on January 23rd.

Next year, Norway will be Guest of Honour at the Frankfurter Buchmesse. Bringing forth new literary voices internationally is an important goal of the initiative. NORLA has entered into the development program, New Voices, in collaboration with Talent Norway and the Norwegian Publishers’ Association.

Group 5 of New Voices consists of the following authors:

The most important year for Norwegian literature abroad is approaching fast. We look back upon a year of preparations, new friends and experiences. 2018 has been a fantastic prelude to 2019!

“Kunst i tall 2017” (English: Art in numbers 2017) is an annual report for the income of the cultural industries in Norway; literature, music, visual arts and performance, made by Rambøll Management Consulting for the Norwegian Arts Council.
The report shows increased sales of foreign rights of Norwegian books: the sale of rights, royalties and coproduction combined has increased by 9.4 percent annually since 2013 and the growth was 20 % from 2016 to 2017.

The report (in Norwegian) here.

One of NORLA’s main objectives is to help Norwegian books and writers get the best possible attention abroad and thereby increase rights sales. NORLA’s agreement with the rights portal IPR License, intensifies these efforts.

December’s translator of the month is Martin Aitken, from England. His very first literary translation from the Norwegian was “My Struggle” by Karl Ove Knausgård, together with Don Bartlett!
Martin was recently shortlisted for the coveted National Book Awards in the US for his translation of Hanne Ørstavik’s novel Love. And now they are long-listed in the PEN America Literary Awards 2019 for best translation!
His most recent translation is the children’s book Estragon’s Stories. The Rat Catcher of Sorø, written by Gaute Heivoll and illustrated by John Kenn Mortensen, which he has translated into Danish(!). Martin has also translated an impressive number of Danish novelists.

During the presentation of the culture report “The Power of Culture,” Trine Skei Grande asserted that cultural policy is freedom of expression’s policy. We at NORLA could not agree more.

The winners are:

Two of our colleagues just came back from a grand tour of Japan in the company of authors Linn Strømsborg and Monica Isakstuen – who both take part in our New Voices-program this autumn – and translator Anne Lande Peters, who is NORLA’s Translator of the Month in November.

They have lots of great memories of exciting events and many inspiring meetings. See the pictures here!

NORLA offers its warmest congratulations to Simon Stranger, winner of the 2018 Norwegian Booksellers’ Prize for his novel Keep Saying Their Names (original title: Leksikon om lys og mørke, published by Aschehoug).

Keep Saying Their Names has received rave reviews and foreign rights to the novel have so far been sold to eleven languages.
Read more about the novel here.

Our translator of the month for November is Anne Lande Peters from Norway. She translates into Japanese and will be an important contributor when NORLA and Norwegian writers arrive in Japan this week for three different literary events (read more here).
Anne is also one of the translators participating in the “Ibsen in Translation” project by the Centre for Ibsen Studies at the University of Oslo.

This past spring, Ukrainian translator Natalia Ivanychuk was decorated with the Royal Norwegian Order of Merit in rank of Knight, class I in recognition of her impressive work promoting Norwegian literature in Ukraine.
She received the order from the Norwegian Embassador, Mr. Ole T. Horpestad, during an event at the Royal Norwegian Embassy in Kyiv in June.