Hanne Ørstavik


Hanne Ørstavik is a Norwegian writer. She has published sixteen novels and her works have been translated into eighteen languages. She is best known for Kjærlighet, the English translation of which won the Pen Translation Prize and was shortlisted in the translation category of the US National Book Awards. She has also won the Dobloug Prize, the Brage Prize, the Amalie Skram Prize, and the Gyldendal Prize.

Life

Ørstavik was born in Tana Municipality in Finnmark county in the far north of Norway. She moved to Oslo at the age of 16. She studied French, psychology and sociology at the University of Oslo and in 1993-4 attended Forfatterstudiet i Bø .
She is trained as a Rosen Method therapist and has practised this alongside her writing.
Her translation of Leslie Kaplan's book L'Excès – l'usine from French into Norwegian was published in 1998. She has also translated the work of Mirja Unge and Marguerite Duras.

Literary career

Ørstavik published her debut novel, Hakk, in 1994, with Entropi following in 1995. These novels were written while she was studying writing in Bø. Both are "punktroman" or "pointillist" novels, a genre associated with the writer Paal-Helge Haugen.
In 1997, she published Kjærlighet, which was voted the 6th best Norwegian book of the last 25 years in a poll published by Dagbladet in 2006. The novel centres on a young boy and his mother and takes place over a single night in the far north of Norway.
Her next two novels, Like sant som jeg er virkelig and Tiden det tar, also focus on family life and difficult parent-child relationships, and the three are sometimes seen as a trilogy on unhealthy family relationships. In Like sant som jeg er virkelig, a devoutly religious mother locks up her daughter in order to prevent her going travelling with her boyfriend. In Tiden det tar, during a family Christmas visit, the protagonist recalls traumatic childhood memories involving her father’s violence towards her mother.
Ørstavik's next novel, Uke 43 features a lecturer who grows increasingly disillusioned with literature's power to capture reality. This was followed by two novels in which the same theme is addressed in a religious context. The protagonist of Presten, is a priest posted to Finnmark, where she struggles to find adequate language to meet the crises affecting the community. Her issues are juxtaposed with an account of the 1852 Kautokeino rebellion and the role played in it by the translation of the Bible into the Sámi language. Kallet – romanen features a woman missionary and writer and once again addresses the failure of language to adequately convey reality, as the protagonist struggles with her readers' misunderstanding and with her own attempt to write an account of her grandmother's life.
Between 2009 and 2014, Ørstavik continued to address the theme of representation, with a series of novels that feature protagonists struggling with artistic failure, exploring sexuality, and coming to terms with childhood trauma. 48 rue Defacqz is set over a single morning in the lives of twins Paul and Rakel, who are struggling with their incestuous connection and their parents' death. Hyenene describes a writer seeking new experiences during a visit to southern Britain. Det finnes en stor åpen plass i Bordeaux focuses on distances and disconnections in an artist's relationship with her partner. This was followed by a standalone sequel, På terrassen i mørket, in which a social anthropologist takes on a research project where she exposes herself to prostitution.
Between 2019 and 2023, Ørstavik published three novels set in Milan, where she herself moved to be with her new husband. The first of these is 2019's Roman. Milano, in which the narrator, who was left behind in Norway as a child when her parents moved to the US, goes to Milan to be with the curator of an art gallery.
This was followed by Ti Amo, a work of autofiction which describes the death of the narrator's husband. Like Ørstavik, the narrator is a writer who has recently moved to Milan to live with an Italian publisher, who subsequently dies of cancer. The novel also continues to address issues of representation, with the narrator struggling to speak only truth. The Times Literary Supplement said that "it bears the shadow of experiences so raw that they overwhelm the possibility of reflection, embellishment and transformation – that is to say, of fiction."
Bli hos meg functions as a sequel to the previous two. In it a widowed writer living in Milan embarks on a new relationship while processing childhood trauma.

Awards and recognition

Ørstavik has received a number of literary prizes. In 2002, she was awarded the Dobloug Prize for her literary works, and in 2004, the Brage Prize for the novel Presten. She was awarded the Amalie Skram Prize in 2002.
In 2024, Ørstavik was awarded the Gyldendal Prize, Norway’s richest literary prize awarded every two years to an author for their entire body of work. Previous winners include Dag Solstad, Jon Fosse, Vigdis Hjorth, Karl Ove Knausgård and Per Petterson.
Ørstavik’s books have been translated into eighteen languages.

Translations in English

In 2014 Peirene Press published the first ever English translation of one of her novels - The Blue Room - as part of their Coming of Age series.
In 2018 Archipelago Books published Kjærlighet as Love, translated by Martin Aiken. Her first novel to be published in the United States, Love was shortlisted for the National Book Awards in the category Translated Literature and won the 2019 PEN Translation Prize. Love was published in the UK by And Other Stories in 2019. It was longlisted for the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation.
Since then, three more of Martin Aiken's English translations of Ørstavik's novels have been published: The Pastor, Ti Amo, and Stay With Me.

Works

Novels

  • 1994: Hakk
  • 1995: Entropi
  • 1997: Kjærlighet
  • *Love, translated by Martin Aitken,
  • 1999: Like sant som jeg er virkelig
  • * The Blue Room, translated by Deborah Dawkin,
  • 2000: Tiden det tar
  • 2002: Uke 43
  • 2004: Presten
  • *The Pastor, translated by Martin Aitken
  • 2006: Kallet - romanen
  • 2009: 48 rue Defacqz
  • 2011: Hyenene
  • 2013: Det finnes en stor åpen plass i Bordeaux
  • 2014: På terrassen i mørket
  • 2017: Over fjellet
  • 2019: Roman. Milano
  • 2020: Ti amo
  • *Ti Amo, translated by Martin Aitken
  • 2023: Bli hos meg
  • *Stay with Me, translated by Martin Aitken

Other

  • 2007: I morgen skal det være åpent for alle
  • 2008: ''Der alt er klart''

Awards