Melancholy I-II

Winner of the 2023 Nobel Prize in Literature

Melancholy I-II is a fictional invocation of the 19th-century Norwegian artist Lars Hertervig, who painted luminous landscapes, suffered mental illness & died poor in 1902. In this wild, feverish narrative, Jon Fosse delves into Hertervig's mind as the events of one day precipitate his mental breakdown. A student of Hans Gude at the Academy of Art in Düsseldorf, Hertervig is paralyzed by anxieties about his talent & is overcome with love for Helene Winckelmann, his landlady's daughter. Marked by inspiring lyrical flights of passion & enraged sexual delusions, Hertervig's fixation on Helene persuades her family that he must leave. Oppressed by hallucinations & with nowhere to go, Hertervig shuttles between a cafe, where he endures the mockery of his more sophisticated classmates, & the Winckelmann's apartment, which he desperately tries to re-enter - a limbo state which leads him inexorably into a state of madness. 

Published here in one volume in English for the first time, Melancholy I-II is a major novel by 'the Beckett of the 21st century' (Le Monde).

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Jon Fosse was born in 1959 on the west coast of Norway & is the recipient of countless prestigious prizes, both in his native Norway & abroad. Since his 1983 fiction debut, Raudt, svart [Red, Black], Fosse has written prose, poetry, essays, short stories, children’s books, & over 40 plays. In 2023, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature ‘for his innovative plays & prose which give voice to the unsayable’. 

Damion Searls is a translator from German, Norwegian, French, & Dutch, & a writer in English. He has translated 9 books by Jon Fosse, including the 3 books of Septology.

Grethe Kvernes is a native of Samnanger, Western Norway, one county over from where Fosse grew up. She studied translation with William Weaver at Bard College, & currently lives with her family in upstate New York.