Meet authors Tomas Espedal, Monica Isakstuen, Matias Faldbakken and Linn Ullmann in conversation with Thomas Böhm. The reading takes place at the Frankfurt Pavilion on Agora.
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Participants
In the beginning...
Every book has a beginning. In this session, Thomas Böhm will lead a discussion between authors Tomas Espedal, Monica Isakstuen, Matias Faldbakken and Linn Ullmann about the importance of the first sentence or the first paragraph in a book. Where does it come from, and where will the author lead us from here?
The conversation will be held in English with a German summary. Event venue: Frankfurt Pavilion (Agora). A free registration is necessary for access to the exhibition center after 5 pm. Register here.
About the authors
Linn Ullmann is the author of six award-winning, critically acclaimed novels, and her work has been published in more than thirty languages. Her latest novel Unquiet has received multiple awards and nominations and has been hailed by Scandinavian critics as a ‘literary masterpiece’. In 2017, Ullmann was awarded the Dobloug Prize by the Swedish Academy for her entire body of work. Unquiet (in German: Die Unruhigen), was published by the Munich publishing house Luchterhand (Verlagsgruppe Random House) in 2018.
Matias Faldbakken (1973) is one of Norway’s most critically acclaimed visual artists and writers. He is represented at some of the best contemporary art galleries in the world, including the Paula Cooper Gallery (New York), Simon Lee Gallery (London), Galerie Eva Presenhuber (Zürich), Galerie Neu (Berlin), and Standard (Oslo). Faldbakken is the author of the highly successful Scandinavian Misanthropy trilogy, written under the pen name Abo Rasul and hailed as one of the most exciting and original literary projects in contemporary Scandinavian fiction. The Hills is Faldbakken’s first novel in nine years and the very first he has written under his own name.
Tomas Espedal (1961) is a Norwegian author who lives in Bergen. He made his literary debut in 1988 and has since written novels and collections of short prose, drawing on a number of different genres, such as the essay, letter, diary, autobiography, and travelogue. The art and act of writing — as labour, as necessity — is one of the recurring themes in his work; as are love, loss, art, and family. Espedal won the Norwegian book award Brage Prize in 2011 and the Critics’ Prize in 2009. He was nominated for The International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award in 2013, and has been nominated three times for the Nordic Council Literature Prize.
Monica Isakstuen (1976) won the Norwegian book award Brage Prize in 2016 for her highly original, raw and acute novel Be Kind to the Animals, about being in the ruins of a marriage. The novel has been translated into several languages and has also been highly recommended by numerous marriage counsellors in Norway. It was published in German translation by Eichborn in March 2018. The German title is Elternteile. Her new novel, Rage, was edited by Karl Ove Knausgård and came out with his publishing house Pelikanen in September 2018.