Gaute Heivoll
Gaute Heivoll (born 1978) made his debut in 2002 with the prose collection Small Dancing Boy, and since then has written poetry, children’s books, short stories and novels. He received critical acclaim for his debut, and when his second book, Omar’s Last Days, was published in 2003, Lars Saabye Christensen referred to Heivoll as ‘an important voice in new contemporary literature’.
He consolidated this position further with his following books, and with Before I Burn a large audience finally discovered the strengths of his writing. Edvard Hoem, author of Mother's and Father's Story, wrote: ‘Gaute Heivoll’s new book is great storytelling of the highest order, an existential horror story from the foremost of the young writers.’ The celebrated short story writer Hans Herbjørnsrud shared this enthusiasm: ‘It has been an eerie pleasure to read Gaute Heivoll’s thrilling novel about the pyromaniac who shook his home district in 1978. Before I Burn shows once again that Heivoll is a key name among his generation of writers and one of the most significant in contemporary Norwegian literature. The novel has all the requisites to captivate readers and become Heivoll’s definitive breakthrough.’ The book went on to sell 80,000 copies in Norway and won Norway's biggest literary award, The Brage Prize.
In 2013 was released to great reveiws, the critics acknowledging that he "composes beautiful prose about the greatness of small things" (VG). The book was shortlisted for the Booksellers' Prize.
