Vaim

By Nobel Laureate in Literature Jon Fosse, Vaim begins a triptych of novels set in a remote Norwegian fishing village.

Jatgeir has come from the small fishing village of Vaim to the big city on his boat, which he calls Eline. He wants to buy a needle and thread to mend a loose button. Instead, he finds Eline herself—the secret love of his youth, who has recently left her husband—who returns with him to the village.

Fosse’s first work since receiving the Nobel Prize in Literature, Vaim comes to life through hypnotic prose and mordant wit, unfolding a world of boats, solitary fishermen, love, and death.

Jon Fosse is one of Norway’s most celebrated authors and playwrights, and was awarded the 2023 Nobel Prize in Literature. He was born in 1959 on the west coast of Norway and is the recipient of countless prestigious prizes, both in his native Norway and abroad. Since his 1983 fiction debut, Raudt, svart [Red, Black], Fosse has written prose, poetry, essays, short stories, children’s books, and over forty plays, with more than a thousand productions performed and translations into fifty languages.

Damion Searls is a translator from German, Norwegian, French, and Dutch and a writer in English. He has translated many classic modern writers, including Proust, Rilke, Nietzsche, Walser, Ingeborg Bachmann, Alfred Döblin, Jon Fosse, Elfriede Jelinek, and Nescio.