New Swedish Books, Spring 2018 1
43 Spring 2018 Lars Norén (b. 1944) Fragments II
Publisher Albert Bonniers förlag www.albertbonniersforlag.se Rights Margareta Petersson Agent & Produktion maggan.petersson@comhem.se Selected Works Ingen prose 2014 Stoft poems 2016 Efterlämnat prose 2017 Selected Literary Prizes De Nios Stora Pris 1980 Svenska Akademiens nordiska pris 2003 Bellmanpriset 2012 Fragments II How can an author erase his own tracks? Perhaps by leaving an incalculable number behind him. In three monumental diary volumes, the dramatist Lars Norén has concerned himself with exploring his inner life as it was during the period from 2000–2015, but these minute explorations of the thoughts and deeds of everyday life have in recent years been joined by richlyimagined poems and concentrated prose. Even this minimalist can work in the colossal form, however: this volume of literary one-liners, the second in the series, weighs in at 560 pages. We encounter a voice which longs to escape its own body, and which, in constant dialogue with Beckett, Heidegger and Nietzche, reflects on wounds and beauty, on the present and the past, on art and dead. (Volume I of Lars Norén’s Fragments is presented in the Spring 2015 issue of New Swedish Books.) Photo: Bobo Ericzen