Maria Navarro Skaranger

Rationale:

Ever since she debuted with the novel Alle utlendinger har lukka gardiner in 2015, Maria Navarro Skaranger has been an author who has surprised and impressed her audience. With this year’s book, Jeg plystrer i den mørke vinden (in English: “Whistling in the Dark Wind”) she has easily written her best novel yet. Although this is another Norwegian novel from the periphery, Skaranger writes in such an original and precise way that it feels like something entirely new. The novel is both tender and humorous, carrying within it a powerful anger in its depiction of structural poverty.

The portrait of the elderly Sidsel, who has fallen by the wayside of society, is touching and amusing. In many ways, Sidsel fails as both a mother and a grandmother, yet we still have sympathy for her. Perhaps Sidsel resembles the medieval fool who was stupid, mad, and yet wise all at the same time? It’s a risky and brave portrayal that Skaranger executes, and she does it so well that on the last page of the book, you’ll want to laugh and cry at the same time. Skaranger emerges as a courageous author with a fundamental humanistic project: Who are the people behind the closed curtains?

Stories like this can quickly turn into social realist tragedies with moralistic finger-pointing, but with Jeg plystrer i den mørke vinden, Skaranger demonstrates an unusual literary surplus. When a pregnant Sidsel takes a taxi to the hospital to give birth, the novel skips smoothly over the birth with the words: “She is admitted and checked, and after a few hours Sidsel begins to push, and blah blah blah, there are so many descriptions of childbirth, nothing unique about Sidsel’s, and out comes a girl of about three and a half kilos (...).” Such original and brave moves show that Skaranger doesn’t write ballads for the middle class, but novels for all of us. 

Jeg plystrer i den mørke vinden is a book that truly impresses, as it says something important about both the art of the novel and Norwegian society.