Melancholy I & II

From Jon Fosse, winner of the 2023 Nobel Prize for Literature, comes an aching exploration of life, death, time, memory, and the artistic temperament.

Initially published separately and brought together here in a single volume, Melancholy I & II are essential entries in the oeuvre of one of the world's most celebrated living writers. Fosse explores the life and work of Lars Hertervig (1830-1902), a troubled painter of dreamlike landscapes who was diagnosed with "melancholy" but is now widely regarded as a major Norwegian artist.

Melancholy I focuses on Hertervig's time as a student--a period he spent tortured by doubts about his artistic abilities and torn between his studies, his art, and his unrequited love, culminating in a mental breakdown. Melancholy II, marking an important shift in Fosse's trademark stream-of-consciousness style, is narrated by Hertervig's sister, slipping in time through memories of her brother on the day of her own death.

Jon Fosse was born in 1959 on the west coast of Norway and has written over thirty books and twenty-eight plays that have been translated into over 40 languages. His first novel, Red, Black, was published in 1983, and was followed by such works as Melancholy I & II, Aliss at the Fire, and Morning and Evening, available from Dalkey Archive Press. He is one of the world's most produced living playwrights. In 2007, Fosse became a chevalier of the Ordre national du Mérite of France, and he was awarded the International Ibsen Award in 2010. He was awarded the European Prize for Literature in 2014, the Nordic Council Literature Prize in 2015, and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2023.

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, and currently lives with her family in upstate New York.

Damion Searls has translated more than a dozen books by Jon Fosse as well as books by many other classic modern writers; his own books, including The Inkblots (a history of the Rorschach test and biography of its creator) and The Philosophy of Translation, have been translated into fourteen languages.