Norwegian Fiction

From the bestselling author of Kafka on the Shore: A magnificent coming-of-age story steeped in nostalgia, “a masterly novel” (The New York Times Book Review) blending the music, the mood, and the ethos that were the sixties with a young man’s hopeless and heroic first love. Now with a new...

Magic and myth inhabit these chapters in figures both familiar and strange. Giant trolls and talking animals are everywhere. The winds take human form. A one-eyed old woman might seem reminiscent of the Norse god Odin. We meet sly aunts, resourceful princesses, and devious robbers. These stories, set in Norway's majestic landscape of towering mountains and dense forests, are filled with humor, mischief, and sometimes surprisingly cruel twists of fate. All are rendered in the deceptively simple narrative style perfected by Asbjørnsen and Moe.

The latest Scandinavian publishing phenomenon is not a Stieg Larsson-like thriller; it's a book about chopping, stacking, and burning wood that has sold more than 200,000 copies in Norway and Sweden and has been a fixture on the best seller lists there for more than a year. Norwegian Wood provides useful advice on the rustic hows and whys of taking care of your heating needs, but it's also a thoughtful attempt to understand man's age-old predilection for stacking wood and passion for open fires.

It's a normal night in August. Literature professor Arne and artist Tove are with their children at the resort in Sørlandet. Their friend, Egil, a driver by day, is staying in a cabin nearby. Kathrine, a priest, is on her way home from a seminar; the journalist Jostein is out on the town; and his wife, Turid, who is an assistant nurse, has a night shift. Above them all, a huge star suddenly appears in the sky. No one, not even the astronomers, knows for sure what kind of phenomenon it is.

La obra más exitosa de Haruki Murakami. Un conmovedora historia sobre la juventud, los primeros amores y el dolor que implica el paso a la madurez. Mientras aterriza en un aeropuerto europeo, Toru Watanabe, un ejecutivo de 37 años, escucha una vieja canción de los Beatles que le hace retroceder a su juventud, al turbulento Tokio de los años sesenta. Con una mezcla de melancolía y desasosiego, Toru recuerda entonces a la inestable y misteriosa Naoko, la novia de su mejor y único amigo de la adolescencia, Kizuki.

My Struggle introduces American listeners to the audacious, addictive, and profoundly surprising international literary sensation that is the provocative and brilliant six-volume autobiographical novel by Karl Ove Knausgaard. It has already been anointed a Proustian masterpiece and is the rare work of dazzling literary originality that is intense and irresistible to hear. Unafraid of the big issues - death, love, art, fear - and yet committed to the intimate details of life as it is lived, My Struggle is an essential work of contemporary literature.

Beautifully told with humor and tenderness, a Norwegian Christmas tale of sisterhood, financial hardship, and far-off dreams, acclaimed by reviewers and beloved by readers across Europe, where it has been a major bestseller. Christmas is just around the corner, and Ronja and Melissa’s dreamer...

The five Basic Bootcamp lessons each center on a practical, real-life conversation. At the beginning of the lesson, we'll introduce the background of the conversation. After the conversation, you'll learn carefully selected vocabulary and key grammar concepts. Next, you'll hear the conversation one time at natural native speed.

In the spirit of Amor Towles and George Saunders, the renowned, bestselling Norwegian author Frode Grytten takes readers on a quietly epic journey: ferry driver Nils Vik’s last route along the fjord, on what he knows will be his last day alive. Nils Vik wakes up on November the 18th and...

Martin's brother Lars finds a nisse on his nightly ski trip! He wants to take a picture of it to prove they exist. Martin has to stop his brother so the nisse doesn’t turn to stone! How will Martin be able to save the nisse?

Butangen, Norway, the years before WWII: Astrid Hekne has inherited the fighting spirit of her grandmother, who was a protector of the mythic Sister Bells that had once hung in the village’s church. The once-traitorous priest Kai Schweigaard, now in his eighties, is wondering how his death, prophesied in a centuries-old tapestry, will come true. Schweigaard tries to understand the myths about the Night of the Scourge, which, according to old village beliefs, is the night when the known world will fall and the Earth will be scraped down to bare rock. Then Norway is occupied by the Nazis.

Troubled by an inability to find any meaning in his life, the 25-year-old narrator of this deceptively simple novel quits university and eventually arrives at his brother's New York apartment. In a bid to discover what life is all about, he writes lists. He becomes obsessed by time and whether it actually matters. He faxes his meteorologist friend. He endlessly bounces a ball against the wall. He befriends a small boy who lives next door. He yearns to get to the bottom of life and how best to live it.

Born on the Norwegian island that bears her name, Ingrid Barrøy’s world is circumscribed by storm-scoured rocks and the moods of the sea by which her family lives and dies. But her father dreams of building a quay that will end their isolation, and her mother longs for the island of her youth, and the country faces its own sea change: the advent of a modern world, and all its unpredictability and violence.

Everyone in the small town in Northern California seems drawn to Jason, the good-looking yet arrogant cupcake baker, and his French Bulldog—which means no customers for the trio. But when they discover Jason's dead body and are treated as major suspects, they decide to investigate! Who is the killer? The ex-girlfriend? The victim's best friend? Even Ms. Tobin is considered a suspect by the new detective in charge of the case. Lauren and Mitch go on a double date with Zoe and Chris, while Annie finds a possible clue.

Bergen Private Investigator Varg Veum is perplexed when two wildly different cases cross his desk at the same time. A lawyer, anxious to protect her privacy, asks Varg to find her sister, who has disappeared with her husband, seemingly without trace, while a ship carrying unknown cargo is heading towards the Norwegian coast, and the authorities need answers. Varg immerses himself in the investigations, and it becomes clear that the two cases are linked, and have unsettling - and increasingly uncanny - similarities to events that took place 36 years earlier.

One of Jon Fosse’s most acclaimed novels, Boathouse is told from the perspective of an unnamed narrator leading a largely hermit-like existence until he unexpectedly encounters a long-lost childhood friend and his wife. Told partially in a stream-of-consciousness style and with an atmosphere reminiscent of a gripping crime novel, Boathouse slowly unravels the story of a love triangle leading to jealousy, betrayal, and eventually death.

Bjørn Erliksen lives a peaceful life on Norway’s west coast and has never considered himself anything but a farmer. But when Nazi Germany invades, and his country’s ill-equipped military collapses in less than two months, it falls on him and other ordinary Norwegians to fight back.

Robert and Mkiwa Livingston are happily ensconced in their tranquil life in Geneva, Switzerland, when Robert's best friend drops dead from a brain aneurysm, sparking a mid-life crisis. Nostalgic for the New England of his youth, Robert begs his wife for a chance to go back to his native America. As the Livingstons settle into their new home in Marblehead, Massachusetts, they - along with the rest of the country - become engrossed in a popular TV show called Quiet Time, about a family who decide to give up all electronic devices and smartphones for one year.

A cat and mouse game of surveillance and psychological torment develops between a middle-aged artist and her aging mother, as Vigdis Hjorth returns to the themes of her controversial modern classic, Will and Testament.

Often called the Scandinavian "Beauty and the Beast", this Norwegian folktale follows the journey of the youngest daughter of a peasant, who - for the sake of her poor but large family - agrees to leave everything she has ever known and accompany a white bear to his mountain castle. After discovering the white bear’s true identity, she seeks to rescue him from a forced marriage to a troll princess.