Lars Saabye Christensen is attending this year’s Jerusalem International Book Fair, 20 – 25 February 2011. The book fair draws a number of international authors, among them Umberto Eco and Ian McEwan. The Literary Café, designed like an actual coffee shop, offers exciting encounter between Israeli and foreign authors. It is free of charge and open to the general public.
Lars Saabye Christensen, who was born in 1953, is a best-selling Norwegian author. He is well-known for his novels, poetry and short stories, and his books have been published in more than 30 countries. Critics have praised his melancholic way of writing and his use of irony and black humor.
Although he debuted with a poetry collection in 1976, his real breakthrough came in 1984 with the release of the popular novel Beatles, which has been known as the Norwegian “The Catcher in the Rye”. Beatles has become one of the greatest commercial successes in Norway, and the Norwegian edition has sold more than 200 000 copies. Saabye Christensen also received the prestigious Cappelen Prize for his work. Readers of the Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet voted Beatles to be “the best novel throughout the last 25 years”.
The novel The Half Brother, which was published in 2001, was Saabye Christensen’s real international breakthrough. It was his first novel to be translated into Hebrew, and it was published in Israel by Kinneret Zmora-Bitan in 2008. It received a warm welcome from Israeli critics, and according to the Israeli news website, Ynet, “there is a good chance that you too will fall in love with this warm-hearted human circus, which takes place in cold lands”. The Half Brother was also awarded The Brage Prize, The Bookseller’s Prize, and The Nordic Council’s Prize. It was also nominated for The Independent Foreign Fiction Prize (2004) and the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award (2005).
«The Half Brother is no mere interesting example of contemporary Scandinavian writing; it's a deeply felt, intricately worked and intellectually searching work of absolutely international importance.» The Guardian
At the Literary Café, Saabye Christensen will meet the Israeli author, editor and lecturer Amichai Shalev. Shalev has studied history and literature at Tel Aviv University, and is currently an editor for literature and art at the daily Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth (Ynet). He has published two novels: Days of Pop (2004) and The Mentals (2010). Shalev was recently nominated for the Sapir Prize for Literature for 2011 for The Mentals.