Aliss at the Fire
Published on 28. October 2010
Book
Paperback/Softback
107 pages
978-1-56478-573-2 (ISBN)
Description
In her old house by the fjord, Signe lies on a bench and sees a vision of herself as she was more than twenty years earlier: standing by the window waiting for her husband Asle, on that terrible late November day when he took his rowboat out onto the water and never returned. Her memories widen out to include their whole life together, and beyond: the bonds of family and the battles with implacable nature stretching back over five generations, to Asle's great-great-grandmother Aliss. In Jon Fosse's vivid, hallucinatory prose, all these moments in time inhabit the same space, and the ghosts of the past collide with those who still live on. Aliss at the Fire is a visionary masterpiece, a haunting exploration of love and loss that ranks among the greatest meditations on marriage and human fate.
Reviews / Votes
"What he writes is so simple and so deep at the same time. He has a restlessness, a tension in his narrative style, and he writes about situations everyone feels involved in, no matter where in the world they are." (Bergens Tidende) "Fosse . . . has been compared to Ibsen and to Beckett, and it is easy to see his work as Ibsen stripped down to its emotional essentials. But it is much more. For one thing, it has a fierce poetic simplicity." (The New York Times)More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Normal, IL
United States
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Dimensions
Height: 180 mm
Width: 131 mm
Thickness: 9 mm
Weight
120 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-56478-573-2 (9781564785732)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Jon Fosse
Aliss at the Fire
E-Book
09/2010
1st Edition
Columbia University Press
€21.79
Available for download
Persons
Jon Fosse was born in 1959 on the west coast of Norway and has written over thirty books and twenty-eight plays that have been translated into over 40 languages. His first novel, Red, Black, was published in 1983, and was followed by such works as Melancholia I & II,Aliss at the Fire, and Morning and Evening, which are available in translation from Dalkey Archive Press. He is one of the world's most produced living playwrights. In 2007, Fosse became a chevalier of the Ordre national du Merite of France, and he was awarded the International Ibsen Award in 2010. In 2011, he moved into Grotten, an honorary residence for artists on the grounds of the Royal Palace in Oslo. He was awarded the European Prize for Literature in 2014 and the Nordic Council Literature Prize in 2015. He currently has homes in Bergen, Oslo, and in Hainburg, Austria.