Nordic Prize and Norwegian Critics Awards

This is kind of old news now, but earlier this month the 2008 Nordic Literature Prize was awarded to Naja Marie Aidt of Denmark for her short story collection Bavian (The Baboon). According to the prize committee:

“The 15 short stories in Bavian (Baboon) are based in a world that appears indistinguishable from everyday life. Naja Marie Aidt writes with a graceful and ominous realism that draws out undertones of reality so that the reader becomes aware that everyday life is resting on a mycelium of potential disasters.”

As with all international prizes, I wish that there was a sample of the work available in English, or rather, a sample of all the books on the longlist. . . .

Speaking of the longlist—the two titles I was pulling for both obviously lost, but as reported at Critical Mass, Carl Frode Tiller’s Innsirkling did win the Norwegian Critics’ Association prize for best book of fiction published last year. The more I hear about this book, the more intrigued I am:

Tiller’s novel Entanglement (Norwegian: Innsirkling) is the story of a man who has lost his memory completely and can’t remember who he is. The author uses different narrators that undermine each other’s stories, trying to make the person remember again by writing letters to him about their relations in the past.