Hanus Kamban


Hanus Kamban is a Faroese short story writer, essayist, biographer and poet. He was born Hanus Andreassen, but changed his last name to Kamban in 2000.
Kamban grew up on the small island of Skúvoy and moved to Tórshavn in 1956.
He writes about the quite sudden modernisation of the Faroese society post World War II. He published his first short story anthology in 1980, and has translated William Shakespeare, Kafka, Graham Greene and other great writers and poets from other countries to Faroese. From 1994 to 1997 he published a three-volume biography of one of the most important Faroese poets, Janus Djurhuus. It was translated into Danish and published in two volumes in 2001. He was nominated to the Nordic Council's Literature Prize for the first time in 2003 for his short story anthology Pílagrímar. In 2012 he was nominated for the second time to the Nordic Council's Literature Prize, this time for his short story anthology Gullgentan, which was published in Faroese in 2010 and in Danish in 2012. The title means "The Golden Girl".
Kamban won the Faroese Literature Prize, which in Faroese is called Mentanarvirðisløn M. A. Jacobsens, in 1980 and again in 1986. In 2004 he won the Faroese Cultural Prize. In February/March 2013 Kamban was invited to the Kennedy Center in Washington DC for the Nordic Cool Festival. He was one of the Nordic writers/poets on the Literature Panel with the theme In the Cracks Between the Lines – Magic Realism of the North.
He was president of the Association of Writers of the Faroe Islands 1992–94.

Short story anthologies

  • Dóttir av Proteus, 1980
  • Við tendraðum lyktum, 1982
  • Hotel heyst, 1986
  • Pílagrímar 2001
  • Gullgentan, 2010
  • * Guldpigen, 2012

    Short stories and poems published in magazines etc.

  • Angels Place, published 2001 in the short story anthology Mjørki í heilum.
  • Tað nýggja Atlantis, published 2002
  • Two poems published in Vencil 1, published 2006
  • Two poems published in Vencil 2, 2007
  • Riddarin Grøni í Vencil 5, 2008
  • Saxifraga Nivalis, published in Vencil 8, 2010

    Poems

  • Cafe Europa, 2008

    Biographies

  • 1994 – Hjalmar Söderberg
  • 1994 – J.H.O. Djurhuus – ein bókmentalig ævisøga I
  • 1995 – J.H.O. Djurhuus – ein bókmentalig ævisøga II
  • 1997 – J.H.O. Djurhuus – ein bókmentalig ævisøga III
  • * 2001 J.H.O. Djurhuus : en litteraer biografi, Universitetsforlag, Odense 2001
  • 2003 – Jósef Stalin

    Plays

  • 2000 – Heystveingir

    Anthologies with articles by Kamban, translations, poems ets.

  • Kveikt og kannað, 1979
  • Tíðartinnur, 1986
  • Tann bráðvakra hugsjónin, 2000
  • Heimahøllin, 2001

    Essays

  • 2007 – Hjarta uttan fylgisneyta: Herman Bang 150 ár

    Translations

  • 1969 – Drekin og aðrar søgur
  • 1979 – Dreymur um eitt undarligt land
  • 1989 – Othello
  • 1991 – Tey deyðu
  • 2013 – Daphnis og Chloe

    Recognition

  • 1980 – Literature award M.A. Jacobsen's Faroese Literature Prize for non-fiction.
  • 1986 – Literature award M.A. Jacobsen's Faroese Literature Prize for fiction.
  • 2001 – Won Listastevna Føroya's short story competition with his short story "Angel's Place".
  • 2003 – Mentanarvirðisløn Landsins