Jon Fosse was born in 1959 on the west coast of Norway and is the recipient of countless prestigious prizes, both in his native Norway and abroad. Since his 1983 fiction debut, Raudt, svart [Red, Black], Fosse has written prose, poetry, essays, short stories, children's books, and over forty plays, with more than a thousand productions performed and translations into fifty languages. His latest prose work, Septology, was published by Fitzcarraldo Editions in 2022. Melancholy I, originally published in 1995 and followed by Melancholy II in 1996, was awarded the Melsom Prize and the Sunnmre Prize. Damion Searls is a translator from German, Norwegian, French, and Dutch and a writer in English. He has translated seven books and a libretto by Jon Fosse - Melancholy (co-translated with Grethe Kvernes), Aliss at the Fire, Morning and Evening (novel and libretto), Scenes from a Childhood, The Other Name: Septology I-II, I is Another: Septology III-V and A New Name: Septology VI-VII - and books by many other classic modern writers.
'Jon Fosse is a major European writer.'? Karl Ove Knausgaard, author of My Struggle '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.'? New York Times 'Jon Fosse has managed, like few others, to carve out a literary form of his own.'? Nordic Council Literary Prize