Tomas Espedal

Through his books 'Biografi' (1999), 'Dagbok' (2003), 'Brev' (2005), 'Gå. Eller kunsten å leve et vilt og poetisk liv' (2006), 'Imot kunsten' (2009) and 'Imot naturen' (2011) Tomas Espedal (born 1961) has created his own unique genre in Norwegian literature: On the one hand it is confessions which are all about the author himself and his life. On the other hand it is is a neatly executed literature in which every sentence apparently also has to go through it own poetic quality check. The author seeks at one and the same time the truth and the beauty in himself. There are few direct and raw revelations, but with concentration on moods and emotions that are not accessible in any other way than through fiction.

Bergeners (2013) continues this project and carries it further. Much of the book revolves around a heartbreak that was also central in 'Imot naturen'. Meanwhile, the author's daughter has grown up and left home, and he always returns to the deceased mother and scenes from the childhood. A key sequence in the book portrays how Espedal celebrates his 50th birthday alone: He both enjoys and is tormented by his loneliness. This is what creates art, but it also contains genuine pain.

The book is fragmentary and erratic. In one chapter he meets Dag Solstad in Madrid and is given advice on how he should see Goya's black paintings, in another he is in New York City with his girlfriend. He moves freely between the major cities of Europe, but mostly he stays in Bergen. The title of the book is an allusion to James Joyce and his Dubliners, and and many famous Bergeners are rapidly and entertaining portrayed.

Another prose lyrical highlight is what Espedal calls the 'Ballad of Denmark Square', Bergen's most sophisticated place and the main intersection, with large apartment buildings and a cemetery close by. Espedal has previously lived nearby and the ballad about the place is given a special metropolitan sadness, characteristic of Espedal's style and tone:

A car crashes into another car and two lovers die, 

everything you want to die, is there on Denmark Square.

There is a grave site on the slope above Fjøsanger Street.

There is a petrol station on Michael Krohns Road.

There is an empty apartment on Ibsens Road. Here lived a 

Charlotte once.

On Denmark Square. Without Denmark. Without Charlotte, without 

Josefine, without Olga, without Stine, without Suzanne, without

Pia, without Mette, without Amalie, without Maja, without Janne; 

what do you actually do here on these streets without names?

Without the city. Just a place where cars meet as the cars

speed by. Just streets, no city. No forest..

No trees. No field or marsh. No animals. No 

river. Just this endless stream of traffic tha

flows that trickles that rumbles that meanders past.

That flows in fast-flowing streams past the nothing square.