Jon Fosse's Reading List

"Another writer writing in German around the same time as when Trakl wrote his poetry was Franz Kafka. His most famous, and best novel, is The Trial . I also read this as a young man, and this novel, and the writing of Kafka in general, remains the literature that has impressed me the most. My own translation of The Trial was published in Norway recently. I have also translated a selection of his stories, that may well be the best he wrote. Kafka changed the way we look at the world, and in so..."

"In my early twenties, I read several of the major modernist novelists. And I fell in love with the novels of Virginia Woolf. The first I read was Mrs Dalloway . To me, it felt like she just throws the words out and each and every one fell exactly, precisely, where they should in a graceful movement as the most beautiful literary music you could ask for. My understanding of literature was another after I read this novel."

"I cannot possibly make such a list without mentioning The Book of Books, the Bible . A couple of decades ago I was asked to write a new translation of the Bible in Norwegian. To try to get as close to the original texts as possible – often translations of the Bible translate an interpretation of the meaning rather than what is actually written – they wanted to include writers in the translation process that worked closely together with experts. For eleven years I worked on translating the pro..."