What is the flip side of life in Norway? Why do we tend to judge others? Is loneliness inevitable? And have you already chosen a verse for your death notice?
Two writers, Kjersti Annesdatter Skomsvold and Maria Navarro Skaranger, have accepted the invitation to the Norwegian Evening on Vltava river. In her novels The Faster I Walk, the Smaller I Am (Argo, 2014, translated into Czech by Ondřej Vimr), 33 (Premedia, 2014, translated into Slovak by Miroslav Zumrík) and The Child (Premedia, 2022, translated into Slovak by Miroslav Zumrík), Skomsvold humorously deals with the fear of life, the (in)possibility of a real relationship and the desire for a child. In her novel Emily Forever (Host, 2023, translated in Czech by Jitka Jindřišková), Skaranger writes in a fittingly unadorned style about a young person in an unenviable situation and through the narrator she comments aptly on how the main character is perceived by others, those who know exactly who Emily is and how she should live.
Hosted by Michal Švec, reading excerpts by Lucie Ingrová.
In Norwegian and Czech, interpreted into Czech.
Admission: voluntary contribution

© argo.cz; hostbrno.cz
The literary debut of Kjersti A. Skomsvold (b. 1979) caused a sensation in 2009. The Faster I Walk, the Smaller I Am has won several awards and has been translated into 25 different languages, including Czech and Slovak. It is a prose about the fear of life and of the people from whom the aging heroine closes herself in her apartment, but also about trying to open the door and live after all. After her two novels, she also published a collection of poems called A Little Sad Mathematics. “Writing about loneliness and death is not easy, I also wanted to write about pain, and I felt that I could approach the subject better through poetry,” the writer (born in 1970) said in an interview with iLiteratura.cz. (source: autorskecteni.cz)
Maria Navarro Skaranger was born in 1994 and lives and works in Oslo. Her first novel, All the Foreigners Have Their Curtains Closed, was the basis for a film of the same name. Her second novel Book of Grief (The Story of Nils in the Woods) won the European Union Prize for Literature. Czech readers know her latest novel, Emily Forever. Its heroine becomes pregnant at the beginning of the story, but her boyfriend leaves her and she becomes a single mother. The narrator of the story tries to get through to Emily and sympathise with her, but at the same time he or she cannot help but have a number of prejudices when commenting on her life. “In some ways [Emily] is a version of myself,” the author said in an interview with her translator published online by Host publishing house. (source: autorskecteni.cz)
You won’t be in Prague? The two authors will also perform in Brno, Ostrava and Slovakia as part of the Authors’ Reading Month festival.
The event is organized by the Scandinavian House in cooperation with the Authors’ Reading Month festival, (A)void Floating Gallery, publishing houses Větrné mlýny, Host and Argo, and with the financial support from the Norwegian Embassy in Prague, the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic and the city of Prague.