Editors Reads Verdict
Written after Fosse received the Nobel Prize, A Shining distills his prose style to its most essential form — a single consciousness moving through darkness toward light, written in the characteristic long sentences that carry his readers through uncertainty.
What We Loved
- Distilled Fosse — the essential experience of his prose in 64 pages
- The movement between literal and spiritual is seamlessly integrated
- The best introduction to Fosse's world for readers who find Septology daunting
Minor Drawbacks
- So short that some readers feel the experience insufficient
- The deliberate vagueness may frustrate readers seeking narrative explanation
Key Takeaways
- → Being lost is a precondition for certain kinds of finding
- → The divine, for Fosse, is encountered in the space between self and world rather than in doctrine
- → Language can approach the inexpressible by moving slowly around its edges
| Author | Jon Fosse |
|---|---|
| Publisher | Fitzcarraldo Editions |
| Pages | 64 |
| Published | October 3, 2023 |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Literary Fiction, Novella |
| Difficulty | Intermediate |
| Best For | The ideal entry point into Fosse for hesitant readers, and essential reading for anyone who has already committed to Septology. |
Into the Dark
A man leaves a road in rural Norway and walks into the forest. He loses the path. It gets dark. He cannot find his way out.
This is the entirety of the external plot of A Shining — Fosse’s short prose work published to coincide with, and in some ways written in response to, his Nobel Prize in Literature. In sixty-four pages he moves a single consciousness through darkness, uncertainty, and encounter with something that is not quite a presence and not quite an absence, arriving finally at light.
The Fosse Experience in Miniature
What the story gives is the essential Fosse experience: the long, looping sentences that carry the reader through consciousness rather than event; the sustained attention to a single perception or doubt; the movement between the physical and the spiritual that is never separated into two registers but held in the same breath.
Fosse is a deeply religious writer — a convert to Catholicism late in life — and his fiction is concerned with the encounter between human consciousness and whatever lies beyond it. A Shining is his most direct account of this encounter: not a mystical vision but a simple experience of being lost and, perhaps, accompanied.
The book was written in Nynorsk and translated by Damion Searls, who has translated Fosse’s major works into English. At 64 pages it is the most accessible point of entry into Fosse’s prose, and also a significant work in its own right.
Our rating: 4.2/5 — Pure Fosse distilled to essentials: the best introduction to his world for new readers, and necessary reading for those already committed.
Reading Guides
Frequently Asked Questions
What is "A Shining" about?
A man walks into the forest and loses his way — a short prose work that moves between the literal and the spiritual as he encounters a presence in the darkness and finds his way back.
Who should read "A Shining"?
The ideal entry point into Fosse for hesitant readers, and essential reading for anyone who has already committed to Septology.
What are the key takeaways from "A Shining"?
Being lost is a precondition for certain kinds of finding The divine, for Fosse, is encountered in the space between self and world rather than in doctrine Language can approach the inexpressible by moving slowly around its edges
Is "A Shining" worth reading?
Written after Fosse received the Nobel Prize, A Shining distills his prose style to its most essential form — a single consciousness moving through darkness toward light, written in the characteristic long sentences that carry his readers through uncertainty.
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