Bergeners

The narrative starts in New York City, at the swanky Standard Hotel and ends in Askanischer Hof in Berlin, a hotel that has seen better days. Between these metropolises we find Bergen. Bergen’s streets and buildings, and the people who walk the streets and live in the buildings. Using Joyce’s Dubliners as a discrete guide, Tomas Espedal wanders through the streets of his hometown. He takes notes, reflects, writes a diary and draws portraits of the city and its inhabitants. He writes tales and short stories, meets fellow writers and other residents of Bergen. He listens to anecdotes and writes letters. He is drawn away from Bergen, and he is drawn towards Bergen. He writes Bergeners, a book about Bergen, and about life, in a way no one else could have written the book.

Foreign sales:
Denmark, Batzer
Sweden, Lindelöws
UK/US/India, Seagull

Praise for Bergeners:

"In a way which is almost more powerful than Knausgård, Espedal slits open his own self with a knife, he lets every nerve, every banal little thought shooting through the marrows come out, without establishing a narrative distance which would make the reading more comfortable. The emotional intensity of the prose succeeds in almost directly mirroring the loneliness that Espedal describes, insisting on its pain. And this pain is inflicted on me by the prose itself, it hurts in a beautiful way, becomes at times almost terrifying to read ... Espedal's novel represents something completely new ... A literature which above all is a retreat to intimacy, to simplicity and nakedness. A literature united in a will to let life step out into the open, into the uninhibited - into honesty and sincerity."
Expressen, Sweden

"Why is Norwegian literature so exciting these days? The answer may be found in Tomas Espedal's new book about Bergen and books ... like many Norwegian writers he dares to be both naive and intellectual at the same time ... Espedal manages, effortlessly and without   pretentions, to be at once very Norwegian and very international."
Politiken, Denmark

"Scandinavia's loveliest ... Stylistically you're never in doubt that you have entered a new book by Tomas Espedal. He is so much his own style, that he has created his own powerful standard for good literature. There is Espedal, and then there are all the others. When you read him, he is supreme, he is the one who defines how to transform your own life into literature ... he must be a favourite to win this year's Nordic Council's Literary Prize"
Information, Denmark

"Espedal writes like a boxer and boxes like a writer in his new old books. At its best, this is literature that will knock the reader out ... confirms that Espedal is one of the best writers in Scandinavia at the moment. And even if these books in my opinion aren't quite as good as Espedal's later books, this is still brilliant, and a must for all fans."
Litteraturnu.dk, Denmark

"Melancholic, but never sentimental. Wandering, but never unfocused. Tomas Espedal's genre-breaking book about Bergen demands time to get into, but it's worth the effort."
Jyllands-Posten, Denmark

"Bergeners reminds me of why I love reading ... It's the kind of book I protect as if it were a treasure ... the book is intense, alluring, humorous and heartfelt"
Villabyerne, Denmark

"His prose is, as in all his books, magical"
VG

"Not a page goes by without startling the reader"
Aftenposten

"Everything is poeticised and beautified in an Espedalian way, stubbornly mythologizing, alluring in an idiosyncratic, un-modern way."
Klassekampen