Professor Andersen's Night

Description

An existential murder story. A master of Norwegian literature critiques contemporary society with wry wit. It is Christmas Eve, and 55-year-old Professor P l Andersen is alone, drinking coffee and cognac in his living room. Lost in thought, he looks out of the window and sees a man strangle a woman in the apartment across the street. Professor Andersen fails to report the crime. The days pass, and he becomes paralysed by indecision. Desperate for respite, the professor sets off to a local sushi bar, only to find himself face to face with the murderer. Professor Andersen's Night is an unsettling yet highly entertaining novel of apathy, rebellion and morality. In flinty prose, Solstad presents an uncomfortable question- would we, like his cerebral protagonist, do nothing?

Dag Solstad is one of Norway's leading contemporary authors. His work has consistently won critical acclaim and he is the only author to have received the Norwegian Literary Critics' Award three times. All three of his novels available in English have been listed for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize- Shyness and Dignity was shortlisted in 2007 and Novel 11, Book 18 and Professor Andersen's Night were longlisted for the 2009 and 2012 prizes respectively.

He's a kind of surrealistic writer, very strange novels. I think that's serious literature -- Haruki Murakami Without question Norway's bravest, most intelligent novelist -- Per Petterson, author of Our Stealing Horses Dag Solstad, Norway's most distinguished living writer, is a clear-eyed moralist who takes an existentialist's interest in the compromises, evasions and accommodations we make to get through life... Wryly humorous and needle-sharp in skewering pretension, Solstad is unlike anyone currently writing in English... A deeply rewarding novel * Sunday Times * [An] exquisitely composed novel... Dag Solstad is an unflinching explorer of the plight of educated humankind in the face of the inexplicable whose artistry matches his ambitious theme -- Paul Binding * Independent * At times dark and moving, even, on occasion, unexpectedly funny, Professor Andersen's Night tackles a premise which would prove just as intriguing in a pacey thriller... It is visceral in its investigations into the derailing of one man's life in all its sticky, existential glory * Scotland on Sunday *