Gunnhild Øyehaug
Knots

A displeased deer, a man tied to his mother by an un-severable umbilical cord, a young woman who is secretly in love with her terminally ill best friend, a slightly peculiar UFO: Gunnhild Øyehaug's acclaimed short stories balance between the sensuous, the surre-alistic and the comic.

From my first reading of Knots in the original Nynorsk, I have been captivated by Gunnhild Øyehaug’s wit, imagination, ironic social commentary, and fearless embrace of any and every form of story-telling. These are stories to be relished, inspiring in their art and humanity both.

Lydia Davis, author of Can’t and Won’t

Formally playful, poignant, understated, and often acutely funny, Øyehaug’s English-language debut teems with humanity . . . A near-perfect collection about the knots we tie ourselves into and the countless ways we intertwine in the pursuit of sex, love, compassion, and family.

Kirkus Reviews

Øyehaug’s newly translated collection charts entanglements of all kinds, from difficult families and first loves to more metaphysical experiments that combine a crisp minimalism with endearingly offbeat conceits . . . [Øyehaug's] stories are as original as they are joyously delicate and tranquil.

Publishers Weekly

The rich variety of the stories in Knots contributes to the sense of unpredictability and wonder that pervades the book. But wonder in Knots doesn’t spring from variety alone. It arises from Gunnhild Øyehaug’s very conception of story, and only a rare writer is capable of such sustained surprise.

Stuart Dybek, author of Ecstatic Cahoots

It's rare to read an entire short story collection and come out with a broad smile on your face and a hunger for more.

VG

[...] imaginative and controlled, written with a near-comprehensive literature-scientific ballast that does not weight her down, on the contrary. There are texts that twist, full of reality, plotting, metallic objections – the style is every day, even though the fiction constantly punctures itself.

Weekendavisen

Rarely you come across a short story collection this original and adventurous.
5 out of 5 stars

Alles over boeken

Gunnhild Øyehaug

Gunnhild Øyehaug
Magne Sandnes

Gunnhild Øyehaug (b. 1975) lives in Bergen. She teaches at the Academy of Creative Writing in Hordaland and has been an editor of the literary journals Kraftsentrum and Vagant, and a literary critic in Morgenbladet and Klassekampen.
She made her debut with the poetry Collection Slave of the Blueberry in 1998 and had her great breakthrough with her first novel, Wait, Blink in 2008.
When the short story collection Knots came out in USA (FSG) in 2017, James Wood called her "a Norwegian master of the short story" in the New Yorker.
Øyehaug also writes for film; she co-wrote the screen play based on own novel Wait, Blink, for the movie Women in Oversized Men's Shirts (2015) and has written the short film "Apple", which was awarded the prize for best script for a short film in 2018 by the Norwegian Writer's Guild.

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Other titles

Present Tense Machine (2018)
Dirt (2016)
The Dinner Party (2014)
Wait, Blink (2008)
Knots (2004)

Foreign rights

Gyldendal Agency
P.O. Box 6860 St. Olavs plass
NO-0130 Oslo
Tel: +47 957 81 640
[email protected]
http://eng.gyldendal.no

Awards

Øyehaug has won several prizes for her writing, among them the Hunger Prize (2009) and the Dobloug Prize (2009).

Edited February 10, 2020 by Gyldendal Agency