For those hoping to discover new books, Nobel Prize announcements are a guide to discovering the authors and literature that enrich our worldview. Reading writers from faraway lands broadens our perspective on humanity and, in the case of Jon Fosse, the latest winner of the Swedish prize, helps us deepen the beautiful moments of birth and death. Although Morning and afternoon Originally published in 2000, this short novel went on sale a few weeks ago by the Madrid publishing houses Nórdica and Deconatus, translated by Cristina Gómez-Baggethun and Kirsti Baggethun.

Still little known and read among us, Fosse was born in 1959 in Haugesund, Norway. His literary work began in 1983 with a novel red and black and so far he has published dozens of titles in all genres, especially novels and dramas; his narrative works Trilogy and Septology They were highly appreciated by critics. The morning and afternoon are an excellent opportunity to recognize and admire the value of Fosse’s prose. This short novel focuses on the birth and death of Johannes, a fisherman who cannot swim and who managed to raise his seven children well with his wife Erna.

Storyteller, poet and playwright, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2023. Jon Fosse is one of the living European authors whose plays are performed the most; This is a guide to his work.

The novel tells about the life that the characters lead on the islands. And he begins by telling us to understand the beauty of birth from the perspective of Johannes’ father: “the child will come to the cold of this world and here he will be alone, separated from Marta, separated from everyone else, he will be alone here, always alone, and then, When everything passes, when its time comes, it will disintegrate and return to the nothingness from which it came, from nothing to nothing, that is the course of life.” Just as birth is a miracle of biology, love, spirit, so death is the supreme element, because it is yielding, silencing, ceasing, letting go.

The time arc of the novel goes from the newborn Johannes to the recently deceased Johannes. And just as the days of a baby bring the family closer, so does the proximity of death, but on this occasion it is a ghostly world where one does not know whether someone is still alive or has already died, whether others are still alive or dead. Best friends come to help us move from one state to another. So, to be born means to enter the world of pain, and to die means to leave it. In the novel where you go there are no words, no place, no body, no pain, everything is separated and everything is without separation, you and I do not exist.

Enchant the rhythm of prose Morning and afternoon: a voice that enables the progression of thought and sensation, with constant, almost obsessive repetitions, since we have few ideas and few gestures, and, in spite of giving ourselves the greatest personal importance, we are nothing more than bodies that live and die. Near death “as if everything had changed, and at the same time it was as always, everything is the same as before and everything is different.” Johannes’ life is uneventful, apparently, but birth and death become the ultimate facts for understanding death: “There is nothing to be done, this happens to all of us.” (OR)