Norwegian Fiction

Toru, a serious young college student in Tokyo, is devoted to Naoko, a beautiful and introspective young woman, but their mutual passion is marked by the tragic death of their best friend years before. As Naoko retreats further into her own world, Toru finds himself drawn to a fiercely independent and sexually liberated young woman.

Magic and myth inhabit these chapters in figures both familiar and strange. Giant trolls and talking animals are everywhere. The winds take human form. A one-eyed old woman might seem reminiscent of the Norse god Odin. We meet sly aunts, resourceful princesses, and devious robbers. These stories, set in Norway's majestic landscape of towering mountains and dense forests, are filled with humor, mischief, and sometimes surprisingly cruel twists of fate. All are rendered in the deceptively simple narrative style perfected by Asbjørnsen and Moe.

Sheldon Horowitz - 82 years old, impatient, and unreasonable - is staying with his granddaughter's family in Norway when he disappears with a stranger's child. Sheldon is an ex-Marine, and he feels responsible for his son's death in Vietnam. Recently widowed and bereft, he talks to the ghosts of his past constantly. To Norway's cops, Sheldon is just an old man who is coming undone at the end of a long and hard life. But Sheldon is clear in his own mind.

Lauren Crenshaw and her Norwegian Forest Cat Annie run their own certified cat cafe in the picturesque small town of Gold Leaf Valley, Northern California. Lauren's fun cousin Zoe helps out as well. Lauren, Annie, and Zoe are shocked when one of their favorite customers is poisoned. Steve came into the cafe nearly every day - but who wanted him dead? The trio find themselves suspecting their customers - even elderly Mrs. Finch, whom Lauren thinks of as a substitute grandmother, doesn't escape their scrutiny.

Born on the Norwegian island that bears her name, Ingrid Barrøy’s world is circumscribed by storm-scoured rocks and the moods of the sea by which her family lives and dies. But her father dreams of building a quay that will end their isolation, and her mother longs for the island of her youth, and the country faces its own sea change: the advent of a modern world, and all its unpredictability and violence.

It's a normal night in August. Literature professor Arne and artist Tove are with their children at the resort in Sørlandet. Their friend, Egil, a driver by day, is staying in a cabin nearby. Kathrine, a priest, is on her way home from a seminar; the journalist Jostein is out on the town; and his wife, Turid, who is an assistant nurse, has a night shift. Above them all, a huge star suddenly appears in the sky. No one, not even the astronomers, knows for sure what kind of phenomenon it is.

La obra más exitosa de Haruki Murakami. Un conmovedora historia sobre la juventud, los primeros amores y el dolor que implica el paso a la madurez. Mientras aterriza en un aeropuerto europeo, Toru Watanabe, un ejecutivo de 37 años, escucha una vieja canción de los Beatles que le hace retroceder a su juventud, al turbulento Tokio de los años sesenta. Con una mezcla de melancolía y desasosiego, Toru recuerda entonces a la inestable y misteriosa Naoko, la novia de su mejor y único amigo de la adolescencia, Kizuki.

My Struggle introduces American listeners to the audacious, addictive, and profoundly surprising international literary sensation that is the provocative and brilliant six-volume autobiographical novel by Karl Ove Knausgaard. It has already been anointed a Proustian masterpiece and is the rare work of dazzling literary originality that is intense and irresistible to hear. Unafraid of the big issues - death, love, art, fear - and yet committed to the intimate details of life as it is lived, My Struggle is an essential work of contemporary literature.

In 1986, twenty-year-old Syvert Løyning returns from the military to his mother’s home in southern Norway. One evening, his dead father comes to him in a dream. Realizing that he doesn’t really know who his father was, Syvert begins to investigate his life and finds clues pointing to the Soviet Union. What he learns changes his past and undermines the entire notion of who he is. But when his mother becomes ill, and he must care for his little brother, Joar, on his own, he no longer has time or space for lofty speculations.

One of Jon Fosse’s most acclaimed novels, Boathouse is told from the perspective of an unnamed narrator leading a largely hermit-like existence until he unexpectedly encounters a long-lost childhood friend and his wife. Told partially in a stream-of-consciousness style and with an atmosphere reminiscent of a gripping crime novel, Boathouse slowly unravels the story of a love triangle leading to jealousy, betrayal, and eventually death.

young woman is murdered in her Oslo flat. One finger has been severed from her left hand, and behind her eyelid is secreted a tiny red diamond in the shape of a five-pointed star – a pentagram, the devil’s star. Detective Harry Hole is assigned to the case with his long-time adversary Tom Waaler and initially wants no part in it. But Harry is already on notice to quit the force and is left with little alternative but to drag himself out of his alcoholic stupor and get to work. A wave of similar murders is on the horizon. An emerging pattern suggests that Oslo has a serial killer on its hands....

Bergen Private Investigator Varg Veum is perplexed when two wildly different cases cross his desk at the same time. A lawyer, anxious to protect her privacy, asks Varg to find her sister, who has disappeared with her husband, seemingly without trace, while a ship carrying unknown cargo is heading towards the Norwegian coast, and the authorities need answers. Varg immerses himself in the investigations, and it becomes clear that the two cases are linked, and have unsettling - and increasingly uncanny - similarities to events that took place 36 years earlier.

Cat-cafe owner Lauren Crenshaw and her cousin Zoe attend their first advanced latte-art class, excited to learn intricate designs. But when their world-famous instructor is murdered, they decide to investigate!

Love is the story of Vibeke and Jon, a mother and son who have just moved to a small place in the north of Norway. It's the day before Jon's birthday, and a travelling carnival has come to the village. Jon goes out to sell lottery tickets for his sports club, and Vibeke is going to the library. From here on, we follow the two individuals on their separate journeys through a cold winter's night - while a sense of uneasiness grows.

Cat cafe owner, Lauren Crenshaw, with Annie, her Norwegian Forest Cat, and Zoe, Lauren's cousin, are catering the anniversary party at the local senior center in Gold Leaf Valley, when the greedy new landlord is killed in a hit and run. Was it an accident-or murder? Lauren, Annie, and Zoe aren't the only ones investigating. Their new friend Martha, a regular at the center, loves writing down tidbits of gossip. Has she inadvertently written down who the murderer is?

The small town of Gold Leaf Valley is aflutter with a food critic's arrival. His online column has made him famous in this part of Northern California, but not everyone is pleased he's in town. When cafe owners Lauren Crenshaw and Annie, her silver-gray tabby, stumble across his body, what should they do? Investigate the crime themselves? Or...leave it to the police? Is Lauren under suspicion for delivering pastries to the dead man's motel room? Or did his intern bump him off in order to gain a promotion?

Christmas is just around the corner, and Ronja and Melissa’s dreamer of a father is out of work again. When ten-year-old Ronja hears about a job at a Christmas tree stand near where the family lives in central Oslo, she thinks it might be the stroke of luck they all need. Soon, the fridge fills with food, and their father returns home with money in his pocket and a smile on his face. But one evening he disappears into the night under the pretense of buying Christmas gifts—and the daughters know he has gone to his favorite local pub.

Annie competes in a cat show, to help raise funds to improve the local park. Her friend AJ, a Maine Coon, enters too. A grumpy Persian called Mrs. Snuggle Face Furry Frost is also a competitor. Her owner, Kathleen, seems to like winning at all costs. But when Kathleen dies at the show, the trio wonder if it's natural causes . . . or . . . murder. Who is the killer? The male judge accused of bribery? The glamorous female judge who owns Himalayans? Or is it another competitor? And what will happen to Mrs. Snuggle Face Furry Frost?

Robert and Mkiwa Livingston are happily ensconced in their tranquil life in Geneva, Switzerland, when Robert's best friend drops dead from a brain aneurysm, sparking a mid-life crisis. Nostalgic for the New England of his youth, Robert begs his wife for a chance to go back to his native America. As the Livingstons settle into their new home in Marblehead, Massachusetts, they - along with the rest of the country - become engrossed in a popular TV show called Quiet Time, about a family who decide to give up all electronic devices and smartphones for one year.

In this crime drama, detective Varg Veum's adventures take him into the world of privileged teenage girls who have been drawn into drugs and prostitution. The situation worsens when the local judge is found dead in a luxury hotel, clad only in women's lingerie. Called in by anxious parents to look for a missing daughter and explain the judge's death, Varg is led deep into Bergen's criminal underworld.