Tynset

Tynset, a small community in Norway, is the magical focal point of the excessive monologue in which the protagonist unfurls the inventory of his life and his consciousness during one long, sleepless night.

A man plagued by insomnia and anxiety wanders around the house that he hasn’t left for a long time. Only his associations transcend his voluntary isolation. The narrative structure is constructed as artistically as a piece of music, using Tynset as a leitmotif.

»An opaquely powerful work about obsession, delusion, repression, and guilt.« Kirkus Reviews

»[…] Tynset, a narrative construct that is as elaborate as it is sophisticated, refuses to be a novel but still accomplishes that which a novel can achieve today: to culminate personal experience in the imaginary, and embed it into a framework that has – without being rigid - the binding and referencing power to bring the singular, the scattered and ambiguous into a rationally plausible and comprehensible correlation.« Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

»The sombre emotional state of the book is symptomatic for our time. It doesn’t leave readers indifferent, even when they don’t agree with the conceptual essence. That’s a sign of mass appeal.« Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

»What a wonderful storyteller Wolfgang Hildesheimer is!« Rudolf Hartung