Nobel Prize winner Jon Fosse and those minimal scenes from a colossal work

Norwegian writer Jon Fosse 's writing is like unearthing treasures that, despite the passage of time, live on within his sentences. Difficult to label, his stories are read with the wonder of not being able to anticipate where they're going or how they'll end. And it was precisely this originality that made him a candidate for the Nobel Prize , which he ultimately won in 2023 "for his innovative plays and prose that give voice to the ineffable."

This recognition led to its translation into more than forty languages , and many of its titles are finally available in our country. Among them is Scenes from a Childhood (Random House), its most recent collection of short stories , which opens the door to a unique work of a charm as austere as it is captivating.

The collection contains a series of short texts Fosse wrote over more than thirty years. Many of them delve into childhood memories, with autobiographical stories such as "Line's Hair," in which a boy observes his father and explores the bond between the two in an everyday back-and-forth that reiterates simple routines.

In actions and dialogues that always seem the same, the awakening of desire and the transition from childhood to adolescence appear, almost imperceptibly. Or, "Scenes from a Childhood," a series of very short stories linked by the thread of very precise and concise phrases , sometimes just a few sentences long. The journey is powerful enough to capture the profound identity that already shaped the writer.

The power of these short stories, in general, probably lies not in the plots, but in the map they construct of growth, trauma, and the uncertainties of who the members of a family truly are . And so daily life appears in the afternoons after school, a morning at the beach, first disappointments, the death of grandparents, first love, a trip to Germany, the strumming of a guitar, which embody the inescapable links of life.

As a whole, the anthology reveals the Norwegian author's minimalist style , that sinuous advance that disconcerts yet captivates with an imagination capable of lingering on the most subtle variations of the everyday, and at its core contains everything that contemporary life is incapable of perceiving due to its speed and its desire for stridency. On the contrary, the cadence is always gentle in the Norwegian author's stories, with simple words that are repeated countless times.

In that sense, it's wonderful to encounter the book's first story , which is also the author's first publication. "He" depicts the life of a man sitting in an armchair, and oscillates between the first and third person in a back-and-forth of voices that create a multifaceted and endearing portrait.

Of course, this original style was refined over the years . Especially since Fosse abandoned playwriting in 2012—after writing around thirty plays—to dedicate himself to fiction. Interestingly, that same year the Norwegian abandoned alcohol and converted to Catholicism . From that moment on, his stories appeared in a numbered series of works that established him as one of the essential authors of our time.

In fact, the writing maintains certain common characteristics : on the one hand, they develop in long prose that lead to far-from-obvious endings, and on the other, they encourage attention to sparse language. This is the case, among others, in Trilogy , one of his most acclaimed novels worldwide.

It's a work that connects three stories, hence its title . The first follows the bond between Asle and Alida, a young homeless couple living precariously in a poor and rugged environment, evoking the biblical scene of Mary and Joseph in Bethlehem; it is followed by a second story of the same couple with their newborn son. Not only do they have false names, but they no longer maintain the illusions of youth, and on the contrary, they are seen growing distant. In this plot, an event will radically determine the family's future. The book closes with the third story in which Alida, now elderly, lives with her second daughter, Ales. Their destinies intertwine, amidst the landscape and the sea.

Beyond the exquisiteness of this novel, everyone considers Septologia to be his magnum opus . He began writing it while living at Paul Claudel's castle in the south of France, where he had been invited by the French poet's family. It took him five years , and he finally finished it in an Austrian village outside Vienna.

The seven parts were published in four volumes in Spanish. They tell the story of two men: Asle, the ascetic painter, and Asle, the alcoholic artist. It is, of course, a challenging work, with a powerful narrative that challenges the reader and raises questions about the most basic issues of everyday life, while simultaneously addressing the larger questions about art and its nature.

In this way, the Nordic mist, the rhythmic conversations, the everyday world concentrate the author's mystique in their scenes.

And there's more. For example, in 2007, the Norwegian writer won the German Prize for Young Adult Literature for the short novel " Sister ," recently translated into Spanish . A 4-year-old boy lives with his sister and parents in a rural area near the sea. He explores the world with his sister, using a simple approach that captures essential questions of existence.

The vivid scenes, the childhood perspective, and the beauty of the language all have something in common with the stories in Scenes from a Childhood. Perhaps that's why it's a work that allows one to discover her writing in a friendly way.

In fact, the stories capture the halo of memory , in childhood recollections that reveal profound questions, moving back and forth in time, and also in narrative voices that subtly leap to reveal the multiple points of view that make up a moment in life. The effect on reading is like a spell ; the musicality of the phrases and the repetition open the senses to silence, demanding cautious observation of what exists between image and image.

In this back and forth lies the original style of the Swedish author destined to become a classic of contemporary literature.

Scenes from a Childhood , by Jon Fosse (Random House).