A Sudden Liberating Thought

Kjell Askildsen is widely regarded as the finest short-story writer in Norway today. His reputation, based primarily on his Kafkaesque accounts of alienated individuals in a hostile environment, has grown steadily since he made his debut in the 1950s. This collection of stories includes an early experimental novella. Surrounding (1969), about the developing tensions between four people cut off on a small island, as well as short stories from various collections, such as Stage Settings (1966) and the highly acclaimed Thomas F's Last Notes for the General Public (1983). The stories relate the struggles of ordinary people with the trivialities and absurdities of everyday life, where loneliness and despair are held at bay by grim determination and flashes of biting black humor.