The Magdalena Fjord

Shortlisted for the Brage Prize 2014

Adi Enberg, Marina Noreg, Magdalena Freud Joyce: three enigmatic and complex women who set their stamp on – and were fatally marked by – the times they lived in.

Set in the fateful years between 1939 and 1942, The Magdalena Fjord is a multi-layered contemporary novel about our recent past. The story stretches from Narvik up North via a fictitious Lovra to a Spain darkened by the clouds of Fascism. While the world is being ravaged by war, the young shipping heir Conrad Tandem embarks on a business trip that will lead him straight through Europe, from south to north. A couple of decades later the adolescent sailor Frank ”Keu” Tverrli is denied shore leave in the US. He compensates by turning into a giant who moves cars with his bare hands, chews knife blades and spits nails. In addition to being a giant, he is acquainted with The Prince of Asturias and the Catalan writer Josep Pla, not to mention a multitude of women, some fictional, some historical, some faithful and some faithless.

Reading material: Norwegian edition English sample translationTranslated review

Review quotes: "With razor sharp wit, Kjartan Fløgstad reveals how language covers up reality. This is brilliant fiction writing based on historical material ... a boundary-breaking style, revealing and subversive prose, and a clear-eyed critical method which again is put on display with THE MAGDALENA FJORD, and which quite simply turns out to be a new high point in Fløgstad's writing."Dagbladet

"Fløgstad in fine shape ... Actual history and fiction are seamlessly woven together in a rich and varied plot"5/6 starsVG

"Fiction and truth in perfect union ... Through wild and humorous prose, Kjartan Fløgstad reveals the ties between international politics and the European intellectual elite ... Using a sort of critical strategy of exposure that plays with and transgresses the norms of realism, the novel reveals connections and ties we normally do not think about. The text offers resistance and demands slow reading. But my, oh my - there is a lot to be found here."Vårt Land

"Kjartan Fløgstad is still occasionally being named as a Norwegian candidate for the Nobel prize for literature. His candidacy will by no means be weakened by THE MAGDALENA FJORD ... There is a rare power to THE MAGDALENA FJORD as a story ... equals the best works of Fløgstad's career."Hamar Arbeiderblad

"They are all complex, ambiguous stories, messy cupboards and cornucopias, but if one should dare to compare them, there are connections between the books. The first one was about the survival of Nazism below the surface after WW2, the second one was about how today's nonsense and entertainment society is moving towards the totalitarian. In THE MAGDALENA FJORD, we meet Spanish fascism, German occupation of Norway and international capital, represented by the shipping industry. Fløgstad doesn't pretend that it's surprising to find dirty secrets under the polished surface. The books are instead about how this came to be, and what it entails."Dagens Næringsliv

"It's often partisan, conspiratorial and self-righteous. Nevertheless, this stubborn attitude is a motor which drives his literature forward with great thrust. The last thing you should wish from Fløgstad are balanced and well-tempered novels."Aftenposten

"When faced with a new novel by Kjartan Fløgstad, the reader is already after a few pages pushed into pondering the historical novel's possibilities in the meeting with our recent past ... Fløgstad is an undisputable giant who writes works we don't get far into before discussion starts welling up inside us ... The contrast between the literary cornucopia and an almost exorcist optics is one of the reasons why THE MAGDALENA FJORD drives the reader between enthusiasm and rage from the first to the last page ... Few writers can yank us out of our habitual thinking patterns like Fløgstad, in spite - or maybe because - of the fact that his conclusions I believe I can draw from this novel make me want to smash the book at the wall as hard as I can."Morgenbladet