The awarding of the Nobel Prize to Jon Fosse last year has brought the welcome dividend of his back catalogue being republished. Morning and Evening (Fitzcarraldo Editions, £9.99) was first published in Norwegian in 2000, though not translated by Damion Searls until 2015 (Searls learned Norwegian – or to be precise, Nynorsk – specifically to translate Fosse).
The novel’s first section covers the birth of Johannes, told from the perspective of his father, Olai. The midwife steers Olai from the room, where he must wait with only his introspection and his faith for company: “he has never fully believed that He is all-powerful and all-knowing like they say, the pious people, but that God exists, no, no doubt about that, because God does exist, but far far away and very very close”.
The second part of the book is an account of the last day of Johannes, now an old man and a widower. As we have seen in Melancholy II, Fosse is devastatingly tender in his depictions of old age. Johannes notices that his fishing lure won’t sink and comes to realise the significance of the dreamlike conversations he is having with dead friends. Damion Searls’s translation is delicate and rhythmic.
Fosse is a great novelist of our time, and if you haven’t already discovered him for yourself, this short, sublime novel may be the perfect opportunity.
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I previously reviewed Scattered All Over the Earth by Japanese writer Yoko Tawada in this column. It was the first volume of a trilogy, in which a young woman (Hiruko) from an island nation that has sunk into the sea searches for her dispersed compatriots so that she may speak her own language again. It is a novel in which strange surface details contrast with deeper underlying themes of identity.
Suggested in the Stars (Granta, £12.99) is a continuation of that story, with notes added at the start to bring the reader up to speed. It opens with a conversation between two dishwashers in a hospital basement who speak in their own child-like patter. A brusque doctor is conducting tests on Susanoo, a young man from Hiruko’s vanishing country, who cannot – or will not – speak. Meanwhile, in an entertaining road trip digression, an Eskimo and his girlfriend make separate journeys from Trier to Copenhagen, where they are joined by an Indian trans woman. They hope that Susanoo may provide a missing link in Hiruko’s linguistic quest. The characters ultimately assemble at the hospital where Susanoo breaks his silence, addressing them each in turn in a Poirot-like showdown.
Each chapter has a different narrator, which allows us to spend time in their company, and to an extent, normalises the otherworldliness of their perspectives. The novel is inventive at sentence level, absurd at plot level, yet strangely penetrating at psychological level. Word play is central to the dialogue and humour, and translator Margaret Mitsutani does an expert job conveying it in English. Perhaps Tawada is the only living author who can match the radical playfulness of Chinese writer Can Xue, where chaos and cleverness combine so well to bewitch the reader.
The Unfilial (Sinoist Books, £15.99) is a collection of four stories by Chinese writer Yao Emei. The long story – 50 or more pages – is a favourite format of mine, proving the perfect length for an evening’s reading.
In the first tale, It Runs in the Family (translated by Will Spence), a young man throws his lover from a bridge, making the family reliant on the local police chief. Things are complicated by the fact that the chief is the spurned lover of the murderer’s mother. Gran is on Her Way (translated by Olivia Milburn), is about a hospital cleaner who gave up her own child for adoption when the father was imprisoned. Years later, she finds herself drawn into the desperate circumstances of other young women, while also dealing with the hangover from her own past. It is one of the best stories you’ll read all year.
Skeletons in the Closet (translated by Honey Watson) follows a young woman’s clandestine affair with an older, married doctor. Though drawn into the passion and subterfuge, she is keenly aware of the betrayal involved. You’ll Do the Job With Skill and Ease (translated by Martin Ward) is a novella-length story about a father who gambles away his family’s house, forcing them into an itinerant living experiment, staying in hotels or squatting in friends’ houses. It is a parable about the foundational importance of home in a family.
There are common plot points among the stories – prison, mistakes, hospital, feckless men and unplanned pregnancy. Yao handles difficult subject matter with sensitivity yet also confidence. She makes bold choices and creates complex but credible human dilemmas rather than providing pat morality for reader comfort. Highly recommended.
In A Simple Intervention (Peirene Press, £12.99) by Swiss writer Yael Inokai, Maret is a young nurse working on a ward for patients receiving experimental brain surgery to cure their destructive rage impulses. She lives a cloistered life among other nurses at the hospital’s residence, where there are few social opportunities. Routine and order shape her life, conversation is functional. Maret develops a passionate, clandestine affair with her roommate, another nurse. The cool detachment of earlier chapters contrasts with the hot passion of their relationship.
Though some patients are from violent or criminal backgrounds, Maret is caring for a supercilious daughter of a local industrialist. Inokai encapsulates the characters with sniper-like observations – the wealthy patient takes the only seat in the room, habituated to assuming that any available privilege is hers.
The writing here is understated, precise and loaded, calling to mind fellow Swiss writer Fleur Jaeggy’s Sweet Days of Discipline. The translation – from German – by Marielle Sutherland is finely attuned to tone and nuance.
This is an impressive novel with moments of icy clarity yet also with affecting tenderness.
Stay With Me (And Other Stories, £14.99) is Norwegian writer Hanne Ørstavik’s 16th novel, and is translated by Martin Aitken, who also translated Ti Amo, her well-regarded 2022 novel about grief and love.
The narrative follows a 52-year-old Norwegian woman, based in Milan, who begins a relationship with a much younger man, a year after the death of her husband. She is a writer, grappling with a novel about another recently-widowed woman in Milan, thus providing the novel’s mise en abyme.
Written in fragments, with paragraphs jumping between storylines and time periods, the book has a feel of dreamy interiority. This has a distancing effect for the reader – observations drift across our view, like floaters.
[ Fiction in translation: When bad choices make good storiesOpens in new window ]
In the second half of this short book, the writer commits to a more consistent narrative perspective. With autofictional candour, she dissects the relationship tensions with her younger boyfriend and draws parallels with her own father – both men were beaten as children, leaving them moody and volcanic as adults. At the novel’s conclusion, the woman’s gaze turns inward, reflecting on her own feelings of abandonment from childhood. In the book, as in life, these realisations cast light back through what went before, creating the illusion of order in what she terms “the parentless chaos”.
Rónán Hession is an author and critic
