Stig Aasvik

The Lofoten Wall

The narrator of this novel is sitting trapped in a job-seeking course through NAV, the Norwegian Labor and Welfare Administration. Among all the other job seekers, he lets his thoughts wander here and there in violent thrusts back and forth in time.

Lofotveggen is a fragmented, intense and meandering insider's tale from within Stig Aasvik's mind; events past and present are intertwined in one long stream of consciousness; his childhood, his mother's sudden and untimely death, travels to his father's hometown in Lofoten, family life, work, everyday events, events great and small, wounds great and small, difficult and painful experiences. Everything pours out, is turned inside out and enlarged.

This is an ambitious story, an inner struggle, a complex, musical, dark, dreamy and lyrical tale about being a human being – here and now.

"He writes the way a meticulous and sensitive Knaugård might do, merciless but carefully and tender about his close ones. The text grows in a well-groomed and rich inner language."
STAVANGER AFTENBLAD

"The Lofoten Wall is sweet. The language is radient. The transitions from thought to thought come naturally. Not for a moment do we miss an external narrative."
ADRESSEAVISEN