Selected Stories

[Askildsen] offers stark portraits of male sexuality and familial dysfunction that are full of compelling strangeness.

(Max Liu The Independent)

“Ultimately, Askildsen’s stories are about the horror of the mundane, the emptiness of everyday life, and the paradox of both wanting and fearing change (…) these tales are unconcerned with plot, but rather focus on the subtleties and impossibilities of human interaction. They provide us with windows through which we, like the characters, may watch each other, may be held up for scrutiny.”–The Literateur

Askildsen's dry, absurd humour is not unlike that of Beckett... His short stories are packed with irony, and the dialogue is sharp and expressive.

(Times Literary Supplement)

“Selected Stories is a meditation on individual freedom, a book fraught with the day-to-day pressures of human life. The nine brief stories collected within can all be described in terms of absences. The absence, for example, of experimental or ornate, “flowery,” prose. The absence of unnecessary characters. The absence of exotic or alien locales, or of complicated plot arcs (…) One senses that Askildsen is delicately, deliberately seeking answers to a particular set of nagging questions, and is never quite satisfied with what he uncovers” – Adam Segal, Numero Cinq Magazine

No current Norwegian writer can say so much in so few words. No one leaves you with so much food for thought and reflection as Kjell Askildsen... I have always had to return to his books. I never finish with them.

(Jahn Otto Johansen Aftenposten)