Lars Amund Vaage
Sing

The person I am writing this to cannot read. She cannot write, and not talk either, although the top experts in the country have tried teaching her for many years. Some words came along, and she did put them into use, but then they crumbled in her mouth. She used them differently than other people. She pronounced the words correctly, but didn’t know what they meant. She tasted them, sang them, tossed them around, so that they started to mean everything and nothing, and then they got mixed with her other sounds, got lost in her play with her tongue and her vocal chords, disappeared into the howl and the mumbling, and we didn’t hear them again.
As a young man he worked as a bus driver and dreamt of becoming a writer. One day, a girl stepped on to the bus. She looked at him in the mirror. When she got off, he left the bus in order to follow her. Now, their daughter has grown up and he is an established writer. Can he finally write the novel about her? Sing is a beautiful, deeply personal novel about life with a daughter who has autism.

‘a shining novel filled with tenderness, tragedy and momentous scenes ... Gratefulness is the strongest feeling I am left with after reading Sing.’

Aftenposten

‘A heartbreakingly beautiful, vulnerable and wise novel about being the parent of an autistic child.’

VG

Lars Amund Vaage

Lars Amund Vaage
Photo: Torunn Nilsen

Lars Amund Vaage taught primary school for a year after finishing school, where he majored in natural sciences in 1972. He was a piano student at the Bergen Music Conservatory from 1974 to 1975, and studied literature at the University of Bergen. From 1975 to 1985 he worked part or full time as a music teacher, journalist, builder, truck- and bus driver.

He made his literary debut in 1979 and has since published ten novels, a book of short stories, two collections of poetry and a play, two children´s books and several translations, including works by Lorine Niedecker and Joy Harjo.
Vaage is considered one of the most original and accomplished writers of his generation.

Foreign rights

Oslo Literary Agency
Henrik Francke
Literary Agent, Literary fiction /
Forlaget Oktober
[email protected]
+47 913 53 922

Awards

The Aschehoug Publisher´s prize for the novel Rubato (1995).
The Dobloug prize from the Swedish Academy (1997).
The Gyldendal Publisher´s prize (2002).
The Radio Listeners´ prize for the novel Kunsten å gå (The Art of Walking).
The Emmaus Prize in 2005 for the novel Tangentane (The Piano Keys).
The Brage Prize 2012 for the novel Syngja (Sing)

Edited December 21, 2017 by Oslo Literary Agency