Imprint: Harvill Secker
Published: 06/11/2008
ISBN: 9781843432111
Length: 224 Pages
Dimensions: 196mm x 24mm x 119mm
Weight: 254g
RRP: £15.99
Bjørn Hansen, a respectable town treasurer, has just turned fifty and is horrified by the thought that chance has ruled his life. Eighteen years ago he left his wife and their two-year-old son for his mistress, who persuaded him to start afresh in a small, provincial town and to dabble in amateur dramatics. In time that relationship also faded, and after four years of living alone Bjørn contemplates an extraordinary course of action that will change his life for ever.
He finds a fellow conspirator in Dr Schiøtz, who has a secret of his own and offers to help Bjørn carry his preposterous and dangerous plan through to its logical conclusion. However, the sudden reappearance of his son both fills Bjørn with new hope and complicates matters. The desire to gamble with his comfortable existence proves irresistible, however, taking him to Vilnius in Lithuania, where very soon he cannot tell whether he's tangled up in a game or reality.
Novel 11, Book 18, for which Dag Solstad received the Norwegian Critics' Prize for Literature, is an uncompromising and concentrated existential novel that accommodates all of the author's fundamental themes.
Imprint: Harvill Secker
Published: 06/11/2008
ISBN: 9781843432111
Length: 224 Pages
Dimensions: 196mm x 24mm x 119mm
Weight: 254g
RRP: £15.99
"He’s a kind of surrealistic writer... I think that’s serious literature"
"An utterly hypnotic and utterly humane writer"
"Without question Norway's bravest, most intelligent novelist"
"In the intriguingly titled Novel 11, Book 18 Norwegian writer Dag Solstad serves up another helping of his wan and wise almost-comedy."
"He doesn’t write to please other people. Do exactly what you want, that’s my idea...the drama exists in his voice, in his comments and views, and that works, it helps connect the reader to the story"