A Shining
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4.4 • 11 Ratings
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
WINNER OF THE 2023 NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE
A man starts driving without knowing where he is going. He alternates between turning right and left, and ultimately finds himself stuck at the end of a forest road. It soon grows dark and begins to snow. But instead of searching for help, he ventures, foolishly, into the dark forest. Inevitably, the man gets lost, and as he grows cold and tired, he encounters a glowing being amid the obscurity. Strange, haunting and dreamlike, A Shining is the latest work of fiction by National Book Award-finalist Jon Fosse, “the Beckett of the twenty-first century” (Le Monde).
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Fosse follows up the voluminous Septology with the hypnotic story of a man lost in remote Norwegian woods. The unnamed narrator has taken an aimless drive and winds up on a narrowing forest road, where his car gets stuck in a rut. He knows he should go for help, but it's cold and dark and he doesn't know which way to go, or whether he would be able to reach another person on foot. Eventually, he sets out into the moonless darkness, and after a time an illuminated form comes toward him, its features expanding as the narrator grapples with what he's seeing: "A shining whiteness. An outline of a person. A person inside a shining whiteness. Yes, maybe like that." Later, as the illuminated form lingers and the narrator remains lost in the woods, he encounters his elderly parents, who turn out to be just as lost as he is, and who bicker among themselves about what they're doing there. Searls translates with precision and playfulness as Fosse commits to his strange vision. It works because the narrator remains anchored in logic even as events unfold like a dream ("Maybe it's something that's only experienced, that's not actually happening. But is it possible to only experience something and not have it be happening"). Fosse fans will savor this assured monologue of ethereal events.
