Fosse, Jon "Morning and Evening"

Fosse, Jon "Morning and Evening" (Norwegian: Morgon og kveld) - 2001

This was our international online book club story for July 2024.

I had found it after Jon Fosse received the Nobel Prize for literature and then suggested it to the book club. Since we all like to read books by  Nobel Prize winners, it was chosen as one of our books.

I have always loved Nobel laureates; there is hardly ever an author among them that I don't care for. And this last one is just the same. A fascinating story about the life and death of a man. A simple story about the passing of an old hardworking fisherman with a humble life. No embellishments needed, a plain reflection on an ordinary life.

Jon Fosse describes all this so wonderfully, his writing is fantastic. A well deserving winner of this most prestigious award.

This is only a novella, even the German translation has only about 120 pages but it is as big as many large books of 500 pages or more (my favourite stories).

Other readers were happy, as well. So, here are some comments:

"At first the writing-style was very offputting, as i am too literal to enjoy poetry and the roundabout way of writing. But then after half the book, I started to understand it, and really enjoyed how much feeling you could get out of the minimalistic text."

"The ending was just stunning."

"It started off annoying me with the style of writing.. the flow of thought, no punctuation... but then about halfway through I was just in awe of the skilful and atmospheric way the story was told."

"The translation to Swedish was a bit special, though, the translator had left a lot of words in the book that are nowadays considered part of the ancient-swedish, and not in normal use anymore."

To be honest, I didn't realize that until I heard this comment. Yes, some of the wording seemed old fashioned even in German but I just considered that the "Scandinavian way".

From the back cover:

"A child who will be named Johannes is born. An old man named Johannes dies. Between these two points, Jon Fosse gives us the details of an entire life, starkly compressed. Beginning with Johannes's father's thoughts as his wife goes into labor, and ending with Johannes's own thoughts as he embarks upon a day in his life when everything is exactly the same, yet totally different, Morning and Evening is a novel concerning the beautiful dream that our lives have meaning."