Where to Start with Jon Fosse: A Reading Guide
Where to start with Jon Fosse — whether to begin with Morning and Evening, Septology, or A Shining. A complete reading guide to the Nobel Prize-winning Norwegian novelist.
Jon Fosse (born 1959) is the Norwegian novelist, playwright, and poet who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2023 — described by the Swedish Academy as having given voice to the unsayable, for innovative plays and prose which give voice to the unsayable. Fosse’s fiction, written in Nynorsk (one of Norway’s two written standards) and translated into English primarily by Damion Searls, is characterised by long comma-linked sentences that spiral recursively around their subjects, an absence of conventional plot or conflict, and a deep attention to spiritual and existential questions rendered through everyday Norwegian settings — fishing villages, painters’ studios, the forest. His major novel Septology (2021–2023 in English) is widely considered one of the most significant works of European literature of recent decades; his novella Morning and Evening provides an accessible entry point to his method.
Where to Start: Morning and Evening (2015)
The essential introduction to Fosse — short enough to read in a single sitting, long enough to fully inhabit his world. Two sections, each a single extended scene. The first: a Norwegian fishing village, early morning, a man named Olai waiting for his wife to give birth to their son Johannes. The second: many decades later, Johannes wakes on what seems a normal morning — goes to find his dog, walks through the village, speaks with his dead father — and gradually the reader understands that what is happening is not sleep but death.
The novella is about the fact of existence — the astonishing ordinary fact of being born and dying — and Fosse approaches it with absolute simplicity. There is no drama, no plot, no conflict in any conventional sense. Johannes walks through a morning that glows with preternatural clarity; familiar things are noticed as if for the first time; the people he loves appear around him. The two sections mirror each other across an entire life without connecting it — there is no middle, no summary of what Johannes’s decades contained.
Fosse’s prose enacts a kind of sustained attention: reading it slowly, allowing the comma-joined sentences to carry you forward without rushing toward conclusion, is the key to the experience. It is a book that teaches you how to read it.
A Shining (2023)
Written after Fosse received the Nobel Prize — 64 pages in which a man walks into the forest, loses his way in the darkness, encounters a presence (whether divine, natural, or psychological the novel does not specify), and finds his way back. The shortest and most distilled of Fosse’s works in English; an ideal second step after Morning and Evening.
Septology (2023)
Fosse’s masterwork — seven parts, 688 pages, a single sentence sustained across an entire novel. Asle is an aging Norwegian painter who lives alone in a cottage by the sea; his days involve painting, contemplation, visits to his neighbours, and thought about his double — another Asle, also a painter, whose life diverged from his at some specific point and who is now hospitalised, near death, an alcoholic. The novel moves in long slow spirals around questions that resist direct answer: What is art? What is faith? What is the relationship between the self one became and the selves one might have been?
Why Morning and Evening Is an Ideal First Book
For a reader new to Jon Fosse, the Nobel Prize-winning Norwegian writer, Morning and Evening is an ideal first book because it is among his most accessible and beautiful short novels and a fine expression of his distinctive gifts, the spare, hypnotic prose, the spiritual depth, and the profound attention to life, death, and the everyday. Morning and Evening contemplates the beginning and end of a single human life, a fisherman’s birth and his final day, in a luminous, meditative, and deeply moving short work. As an entry point it is ideal, for it is short, accessible, and a perfect example of his hypnotic, spiritually resonant style. It welcomes the newcomer with its luminous prose, its quiet profundity, and its emotional depth, drawing the reader into his distinctive vision. It is a fine representation of his gifts in a brief, approachable form, so the new reader encounters Fosse at his most accessible. For the newcomer, then, Morning and Evening is an excellent starting point.
What to Expect as a New Reader
As a new reader, you can expect Morning and Evening to be a spare, hypnotic, and deeply moving short novel. You can expect spare, hypnotic prose, for Fosse writes in a distinctive, rhythmic, flowing style, with little conventional punctuation, that has an incantatory quality. You can expect a contemplation of life and death, for the novel contemplates the beginning and the end of a single human life. You can expect spiritual depth, for Fosse’s work is suffused with a quiet, mystical, spiritual sensibility. You can expect profound attention to the everyday, for the novel finds depth in ordinary life and its passing. You can expect a short, meditative, and luminous work. You can expect emotional and spiritual resonance achieved through simplicity and rhythm. Expect, in short, a spare, hypnotic, and deeply moving short novel, a fine introduction to Fosse’s gifts.
Going Deeper After Your First Book
Once Morning and Evening has introduced you to Fosse’s gifts, the reader who wishes to go deeper can explore his other work, above all his monumental masterpiece, a long, hypnotic sequence of novels that represents the fullest expression of his vision. This major work continues his spare, flowing, incantatory style and his spiritual depth on a vast scale, following its characters through life, memory, and faith, while his other novels, plays, and writings reveal the range of his achievement, including his celebrated work for the theatre. Reading these after Morning and Evening deepens your appreciation of Fosse’s distinctive gifts, the spare, hypnotic prose, the spiritual depth, and the profound attention to life and death. His characteristic style runs through his work. Building your reading journey through Fosse is a matter of following his writing from Morning and Evening into his major sequence and his other work. The reader who begins here and continues will encounter one of the most distinctive and spiritually profound contemporary writers, and a Nobel laureate.
Reading Jon Fosse
Begin with Morning and Evening — it is the most accessible introduction to Fosse’s style and method, and can be read in an afternoon. Read A Shining as a companion piece. Approach Septology once you have adjusted to Fosse’s rhythm; it rewards readers who give it time and slow attention.
For the full Jon Fosse bibliography, reviews, and biography, visit the Jon Fosse author page on Editors Reads.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Where should I start with Jon Fosse?
Morning and Evening (2015 in English) is the most widely recommended starting point — a short novella of about 100 pages that pairs two scenes at opposite ends of a single life: the morning of Johannes's birth and the morning of his death. It is Fosse's most concentrated and most immediately accessible work, introducing his signature prose style (long, comma-linked sentences; recursive meditation; everyday Norwegian setting; deep spiritual attention) in a form that can be read in a single sitting. Septology is the essential work for readers ready for a sustained commitment.
What is Septology about?
Septology (published in English as a single 688-page volume in 2023) is Fosse's major achievement — a seven-part novel following Asle, an aging Norwegian painter, as he contemplates his paintings, his faith, and the existence of his mysterious double (also named Asle, also a painter, whose life took a different and darker path). The novel is written in a single long sentence with paragraph breaks but almost no full stops; it circles and spirals around questions of identity, art, faith, and what makes a life. Won Fosse the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2023.
What is A Shining about?
A Shining (2023) is a very short prose work — about 64 pages — in which a man walks into the forest and loses his way, then encounters a presence in the darkness and finds his way back. It was written after Fosse received the Nobel Prize and distils his style to its most essential form: a single consciousness moving through uncertainty toward light, in the long comma-joined sentences that carry his readers through an experience that is simultaneously literal and spiritual.
How demanding is Jon Fosse to read?
Fosse is unusual among demanding literary writers in that his difficulty is not cognitive but perceptual — his novels do not require special knowledge or literary background, only a willingness to adjust to a slower, more recursive reading pace. His sentences are long but not syntactically complex; his subjects (birth, death, art, faith, the Norwegian landscape) are universal rather than arcane. Readers who find his work challenging often find that adjusting their reading speed — reading slower, allowing the repetitions to accumulate rather than trying to push through them — resolves the difficulty.
