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Book Cover for: Melancholy II, Jon Fosse

Melancholy II

Jon Fosse

Not so much a sequel as an alternate perspective, Jon Fosse's coda to his brilliant and much-lauded Melancholy picks up the story of tormented landscape painter Lars Hertervig in 1902, shortly after his death. Taking place, like Melancholy, over the course of a single day, it treats us to the thoughts of Hertervig's sister, carrying on with her life in the absence of her eccentric brother. She recalls their childhood under a domineering father, remembering Hertervig's difficulties fitting in, and likewise Hertervig the man: poors, always hovering on the brink, fanatical about painting and his own perceived shortcomings as an artist and human being. In the same hypnotic prose for which Fosse is famous, Melancholy II serves as an investigation not only into the collateral damage wrought by art and artists, but into a master's tools and obsessions as well.

Book Details

  • Publisher: Dalkey Archive Press
  • Publish Date: Jan 6th, 2015
  • Pages: 97
  • Language: English
  • Edition: undefined - undefined
  • Dimensions: 8.50in - 5.50in - 0.40in - 0.30lb
  • EAN: 9781564789044
  • Categories: GeneralLiterary

About the Author

Dickens, Eric: - Eric Dickens is a translator and reviewer of Estonian and Finnish-Swedish literature. He is currently translating work by the novelists Toomas Vint and Hannele Mikaela Taivassalo.
Fosse, Jon: - Called the new Ibsen in the German press, and heralded throughout Western Europe, Jon Fosse is one of contemporary Norwegian literature s most important writers. In 2000, his novel Melancholy won the Melsom Prize, and Fosse was awarded a lifetime stipend from the Norwegian government for his future literary efforts.

Praise for this book

A unique, painful and beautiful piece in which the unorthodox and talented genius of Fosse and his subject seem to merge in the short span of the narrator's shrinking memory.--Hans Rollman"PopMatters" (01/01/0001)