The website Books from Norway provides foreign publishers and journalists information, in English, about Norwegian literature as well as an overview of Norwegian translators. NORLA and our partners recently celebrated that the website, at the end of 2017, consisted of over 1000 titles and 150 translator profiles.

NORLA is collaborating with Talent Norway and The Norwegian Publishers’ Association, on the talent development programme, New Voices.

The idea is that engagement with foreign business and readers will contribute to an awareness of, and open up new perspectives on, the participant’s own authorship. NORLA will also make provisions so that the programme can contribute towards new international opportunities and make the participants better equipped to present their books internationally over a long-term.

January’s translator of the month is Norwegian-Arabic Sherin Abdel Wahab, who has recently translated Jon Fosse’s novel Morning and Evening, in collaboration with Amal Al Sadaany.

What does literature do for its readers? Good literature opens both hearts and doors. To quote Olav H. Hauges most famous poem, It is that dream: “that one morning we’ll glide into a cove we didn’t know.” We dream of something similar for Norwegian literature. Through our project – Norway as Guest of Honour at the Frankfurt Book Fair 2019 – we want Norwegian literature to open hearts and doors for its foreign readers.

In 2019, Norway will be the Guest of Honour at the Frankfurt Book Fair. The project is Norway’s largest commitment to cultural-export, ever. As part of the Guest of Honour project, NORLA, in cooperation with The Norwegian Centre for Design and Architecture (DOGA), will launch an open architecture competition for the design of an indoor pavilion, which will be 2300 sqm. The competition was announced January 12 2018.

At NORLA the Christmas holiday begins on Friday, December 22.
Our office will open again Tuesday, January 2.

We wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

The Norwegian foreign missions have an important role in the Frankfurt project. The Embassy in Rome is one of the foreign missions who are doing their part to put Norwegian literature on the international agenda.

The translator of the month for December is Evgenia Vorobyeva, who translates into Russian. She is of current interest due to her translation of Anders Kvammen’s prize-winning graphic novel Ungdomsskolen (“Junior High”) which was launched in December during the Book Fair Non/fiction in Moscow.
Evgenia has translated a number of Norwegian non-fiction titles and also teaches Norwegian, translation and interpreting at university level.

Read more about Evgenia here.

Those of you who understand Norwegian can read the interview here.

NORLA offers its warmest congratulations to Helga Flatland, winner of The Norwegian Booksellers’ Prize 2017 for her novel A Modern Family!

The winners are:

Translators are the most important emissaries we have for bringing Norwegian literature out into the world. Their work is of decisive significance and to spotlight this work, we started the interview series entitled “Translator of the month”. Here we will get to know some of those who translate from Norwegian and learn about their challenging work of transmitting Norwegian literature into all the different languages of the world.

The translator of the month for November is Kerri A. Pierce, who translates into American English. She has selected and translated three short stories in the November edition of Words without Borders and she has also written an introduction to the featured short stories by Gunnhild Øyehaug, Merethe Lindstrøm and Laila Stien. Kerri is a translator of both fiction and non-fiction from Norwegian, and she has also translated from Danish, Swedish, German, Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese and Faroese.

Read more about Kerri here.

Those of you who understand Norwegian can read the interview here.

Now that things have calmed down after the Frankfurt Book Fair we are busy harvesting the fruits of a hectic week of meetings, idea development and establishing collaborations in preparation for Frankfurt 2019. In just a year’s time it will happen: Norway will take over the role as Guest of Honour after Georgia and we will embark on the most important year ever in the history of the export of Norwegian literature.