So simply, so beautifully is how Tomas Espedal’s new novel, The Year, opens. His prose has always had a poetic undertone, and in this book the poetical is even more prominent than before. The Year is a book about loving the same person all one’s life, even when that love is unrequited. It is a book about ageing and desperation, about stagnation and repetition. The action begins on 6 April, the date when the Italian poet Petrarch saw his beloved Laura for the first time, when she was 13 years old. Relentlessly and beautifully, Tomas Espedal examines whether love of the one and only, love that never ends, the love Petrarch describes in his poems to Laura still has relevance in our age – the grand passion. Is it still possible?
Tomas Espedal
Jakob Dall
Tomas Espedal (born 1961) made his debut in 1988. A graduate of the University of Bergen, he has published both novels and short prose collections. In 1991 he won an award from the joint Radio P2/Book Club Novelists´ competition for She and I. Founder of the Bergen International Poetry Festival, Espedal’s later works explore the relationship between the novel and other genres such as essays, letters, diaries, autobiographies and travelogue. Espedal’s Tramp (Or the art of living a wild and poetic life) (2006), Against Art (2009) and Bergeners (2013) have all been nominated for the Nordic Council Literature Prize. The author was awarded the Literary Critics’ Prize in 2009.
Rights sold to
Denmark, Batzer
Germany, Matthes & Seitz
UK/US/India, Seagull
Other titles
Bergeners (2013)
Against Nature (2011)
Against Art (2009)
Tramp. Or the art of living a wild and poetic life. (2006)
Awards
Nominated for the Nordic Council's Literary Prize 2007, 2010 and 2014
Longlisted for the IMPAC Prize 2012
Winner of the Brage Prize 2011
Winner of the Critics' Prize 2009
Winner of the Gyldendal Prize 2009
Winner of the Bergen Prize 2006
