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Informationen zum Autor Called the new Ibsen in the German press, and heralded throughout Western Europe, Jon Fosse is one of contemporary Norwegian literature s most important writers. In 2000, his novel Melancholy won the Melsom Prize, and Fosse was awarded a lifetime stipend from the Norwegian government for his future literary efforts. Damion Searls is a writer in English and translator from German, French, Dutch, and Norwegian. Searls has translated writers including Ingeborg Bachmann, Thomas Bernhard, Peter Handke, Christa Wolf; his translation of Hans Keilson's "Comedy in a Minor Key"was a New York Times Notable Book of 2010 and National Book Critics Circle Award finalist in Fiction. Klappentext Art-school angst in the 1850s inspires modern writer.Lars Hertervig, a young Quaker from a small Norwegian island, has been sent by a patron to study landscape painting in Dusseldorf. Lars lies on his bed in a rented room, on the day his prominent teacher, Hans Gude, plans to critique his work. Lars avoids the studio, fearing that Gude will tell him he can't paint and must return home. Mentally, Lars relives the time his landlady's 15-year-old daughter, Helene, let her hair down for him. He fancies they're in love. But Helene has just told him her uncle wants to evict him. Helene seems indifferent and Lars alternately berates her and tries to get her to run away with him. In an artist's tavern, Malkasten, Lars accuses a classmate, Alfred, one of many colleagues who in Lars's opinion can't paint, of stealing his pipe. He's menaced by delusions of black and white clothes that surround him and almost smother him. By now, the reader wishes they would. Wandering the streets with his suitcases, Lars encounters Gude, who compliments his talent. But Lars's paranoia admits no praise. Alfred lures Lars back to Malkasten, claiming Helene is awaiting him there. He's greeted instead by a jeering section of bad painters. The next segment details a day at Gaustad asylum, where Lars has been forbidden to paint. In his doctor's view, art, masturbation and maligning the virtue of the world's women are the three pillars of Lars's insanity. Lars contemplates escape. He's no more popular in the madhouse than in art school, and we last see him being pelted with snowballs by fellow inmates as he skulks off. The third section concerns a reclusive writer, Vidme, who in 1991 is inspired to write a novel about Hertervig. Or maybe not. The stream-of-consciousness narration, a minute-by-minute reportage of obsessive, repetitive thoughts, is a numbing rendition of the banality of anxiety.This author's own madness lies in tedium. (Kirkus Reviews) Zusammenfassung In real life, Lars Hertervig would become, along with Edvard Munch, one of Norway’s most renowned painters—but in Melancholy he is a promising young artist tortured by doubt and unhinged by unrequited love....
