The Year

I wanted to write a book about the seasons spring autumn summer winterthe bright days of April and June the darkness of August describe the months the weeks the days the hours of the dayand the changes repeating themselvesalways in a new way

So simply, so beautifully is how Tomas Espedal’s new novel, The Year, opens. His prose has always had a poetic undertone, and in this book the poetical is even more prominent than before. The Year is a book about loving the same person all one’s life, even when that love is unrequited. It is a book about ageing and desperation, about stagnation and repetition. The action begins on 6 April, the date when the Italian poet Petrarch saw his beloved Laura for the first time, when she was 13 years old. Relentlessly and beautifully, Tomas Espedal examines whether love of the one and only, love that never ends, the love Petrarch describes in his poems to Laura still has relevance in our age – the grand passion. Is it still possible?

Foreign sales Denmark, Batzer Germany, Matthes & Seitz UK/US/India, Seagull Czech Republic, Teapot

«This is superb literature, which in its esthetic accomplished form offers insight and a melancholy comfort when it comes to all the losses we will experience. But it is also a homage to everything that’s beautiful, lovely and painful in our existence. Give it to somebody you love.»****** (6 out of 6 stars), Bergens Tidende

«The different reflections are the strongest part of this novel ... it lies in the small, poetic sentences, in the reflections of a man on the edge.»****** (6 out of 6 stars), Stavanger Aftenblad

«Tomas Espedal has written a story of grief that he does not want to extinguish. About spring, young age, the beginning of love. About autumn, old age, the losses, the grief that you cannot escape, that you cannot drink or beat your way out of. And about how close together spring and autumn really are. This makes moving literature.»****** (6 out of 6 stars), Fædrelandsvennen

«This has become an insisting piece of prose, full of personal experience and close to real life, touching poetry in its form and expression. It is also a tribute to persistence, that you are to endure pain and hardship in life, but not without art and beauty. I believe that reading Tomas Espedal can make you a better person.»****** (6 out of 6 stars), Adresseavisen

«The text is unusual, beautiful, strange. I want to quote entire pages … The Year is a complex web of text, which strengthens and expands an already significant authorship.»Klassekampen

«Tomas Espedal is one of the big names of Norwegian contemporary literature … Dante lifted love up to the heavens or dragged it down to hell. Espedal’s strength is his ability to stay on earth.»NRK P2

«Espedal is a literary pioneer with an unique alertness and sensibility for the many shades of human existence.»Dagbladet

«The Year is an unusually good book to talk to. It reminds us of the newspaper interviews with standard questions, "how often do you cook", "with whom would you like to get stuck in an elevator", you find yourself involuntarily replying to the author. "Could you live in New York/ Could you live in Berlin/ would you live in the woods/ would you really live in the countryside/ on an old farm/ with a new lover/ or alone/ with a dog?" Espedal provides no answers at all. He keeps walking, a few steps ahead of everybody else.»Dagens Næringsliv

«Tomas Espedal writes beautifully about death and love ... Yet again it is Tomas Espedal's unique talent for light, elegant and meditated literary dawdling that makes his book a great read.»Dagsavisen

«The Year has a high density of these quivering sentences, and in spite of all the misery we also find glimpses of life affirmation and humour. A small large novel full of unhappy, wise sentences.»Weekendavisen (DK)

«The Year is a culmination of the string of self-biographical works including Tramp which came ten years ago and My private Life which was published last year.»***** (5 out of 6 stars), Politiken (DK)