The Norwegian author and short story master Kjell Askildsen is dead. He would be 92 years old in a few days.
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– This is unspeakably sad, says publishing manager Ingeri Engelstad in October publishing to VG.
She confirms that Kjell Askildsen died peacefully on Thursday night with his wife Gina Giertsen by his side. Askildsen turned 91 years old – he died one week before he was to turn 92.
– We received the message last night. It was a peaceful death. It is a great loss for Norwegian literature and for us at the publishing house that he is gone. Kjell Askildsen set his own standard for short story and prose art, says Engelstad to VG.
Kjell Askildsen was born in 1929 and is considered one of the greatest fiction writers in Norwegian post-war literature. He made his debut with the collection of short stories “Hereafter I follow you all the way home” in 1953 – and has published a large number of novels and short story collections. The range of literary prizes is also long: Askildsen won the Critics’ Prize twice, Brage’s honorary prize in 1996 – and in 2009 he received the Swedish Academy’s Nordic Prize.
–He was not only loved by the critics, but also the readers embraced his short stories – and “Thomas F’s latest notes to the public” was named by Dagbladet the best Norwegian book published in the last 25 years.
– Kjell Askildsen was without a doubt the most important short story list in his generation. It has almost become a separate concept: To write like Askildsen. And there are many who have tried just that, but very few who have succeeded. His style will be remembered. He also had a very interesting life – as Alf van der Hagen has written about in his interview book «Kjell Askildsen. A life », says VG’s book reviewer Sindre Hovdenakk.
Read VG’s review of the book here: An excellent author portrait
– The hero of so many
Author Per Petterson (69) received the news of Askildsen’s death directly from the publisher early Friday morning.
–– It is a big loss, he says when VG calls.
– Now Kjell has not written anything for a long time. He was old. But I went to high school with his son, so I have known Kjell for 50 years. He has been one of the great ones for most of us.
– Kjell was the hero of so many. Nobody did what he did when it comes to short stories, says Petterson.
Ullmann: – Only one Askildsen
Linn Ullmann (55) has stated that there are good authors in Norway, some very good authors – “and then there is Kjell Askildsen”
– Yes, that’s how it is. If I were to meet an author who does not have a relationship with Askildsen, I wonder if I can not have a relationship with that author. Askildsen has taught us something about the importance of form and linguistic composition – and simply say something about what is true, says Linn Ullmann who had not been able to retell an Askildsen short story.
– No, then I must have hummed it. Askildsen plays strings that are deeper than action and theme.
–She draws particular attention to the short story “I’m not like that, I’m not like that”.
– How many people do not want to say exactly that? I read that short story every other year, maybe every year – and each time it is completely different for me. And now that we have been through a tough time, and many have felt lonely, vulnerable and scared, Askildsen is also the champion.
– I think the closure of Norway was scary, and I went to Askildsen. Now I think the reopening is scary, and I go again to Askildsen, says Linn Ullmann to VG.
– The very best
Author Tove Nilsen (68) has known Askildsen since she was young.
– Kjell got old, but this is very strange. The conversations with Kjell have meant a lot to me. All the travels and performances we have had. I think Kjell has meant a lot to me Everyone who writes in Norway, she says.
–Nilsen believes that the country has now lost the very best short story list.
– Not only was he a very good friend. Many authors have probably had Kjell in mind when we have written. He made us stretch, she says.
Dag Solstad: – One I really admire
Author Dag Solstad (80) has just received the news when VG calls.
– It was not unexpected, but very sad nonetheless. I have known Kjell Askildsen since 1966. He has meant a lot to me personally and is one of the authors I really admire, he says.
–Minister of Culture Abid Raja (45) writes on Twitter that Norway has lost one of its greatest authors.
«Short story master Kjell Askildsen died yesterday, and with that the last sentence is set in a very unique authorship that has delighted readers in Norway and many other countries since its debut in 1953. Rest in peace good fellow citizens.»
Hoem: – His time was up
Edvard Hoem has known Askildsen ever since he was in his 20s.
– Kjell was one of the first to take care of me when I came to Oslo with high ambitions in 1969. We worked together in the Writers’ Center during the day and hung out at the Casino restaurant in the evening. He was a leader in the writing community, and everyone had enormous respect for him – partly because he was so cash on the demand for literary quality, says Hoem.
–Hoem believes that Askildsen himself stood for an extremely high literary quality.
– His ideal was the scarce, concentrated style – and the championship lies in the short stories. The level was … yes, so high that very few can get there. It’s sad that he’s gone, but it’s a fact that his time was up.
Historic comeback
In 2015, Askildsen made a historic comeback as an 86-year-old: For the first time in 19 years, he published a book of newly written short stories. “A little piece of Norwegian literary history”, wrote VG’s reviewer Sindre Hovdenakk about the book «Friendship Prize»:
“It is, as so many times before in Askildsen’s work, about distance and silence, about the hopeless project it is so often to achieve real contact and friendship, about concealment and clumsiness and about men who cannot communicate.
It is also about infidelity and lust, about lies and jealousy. And small explosions of aggression under a seemingly calm surface. “
Read the review here: Historical comeback!
Compared to Hemingway
Kjell Askildsen’s books have been translated into 32 languages. In recent years, according to the publisher, it has gained many new readers outside Norway, and in the autumn of 2019, his entire collected work was published in German. Critics around the world have praised his style and El Pais has compared him to Hemingway:
“A great storyteller … can be compared to Hemingway and Carver in his style, and to Kafka, Beckett and Camus in their content,” wrote El Pais in connection with Askildsen’s release in Penguin’s Modern Classics series.
While the critic in The Independent wrote the following: «Kjell Askildsens Short stories in selection shows that it is more about contemporary short stories than America, and more about Norway than Knausgård and Nesbø ».
Egon Holstad (49), commentator in VG’s co-operation newspaper in Tromsø, wrote warm tribute when Askildsen turned 90 years old. It was with a heavy heart that Holstad received the news of his death.
–– This was very sad, he says and adds:
– For me, there is no one over him. He was a kind of Townes Van Zandt of literature, where quality always trumped quantity, and where every word, every sentence and every publication was boiled down to the absolutely essential. Deadly precise. Extremely hard and soft. Bitter, wise and funny. The word genius and legend is all too often used about people who do not deserve it. Kjell Askildsen meets all the criteria for being called both.
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