Author Roy Jacobsen has passed away at the age of 70.

In September 2025, Roy underwent the last of three successful surgeries. The two most recent procedures, known in medical terms as "Elephant Trunk Phase 1 and 2," provided him with a new blood vessel system around his heart after he had to undergo emergency surgery in 2023 due to an aortic dissection.

Shortly after the final operation, he developed lung failure, which he battled for several weeks but, unfortunately, was unable to overcome.

He is survived by his wife Anneliese Pitz, two children, and seven grandchildren. The family wishes to extend their heartfelt gratitude to all the wonderful people at Rikshospitalet (National Hospital) for their immense dedication and commitment to Roy, from start to the very end.

Roy Jacobsen (Born December 26, 1954) is one of Norway’s most acclaimed, award-winning, and widely read authors. Since his debut in 1982, he has published over 25 books and has been translated into more than 40 languages.

John Erik Riley, Editorial Director for Norwegian Fiction at Cappelen Damm, states:

"Today, we have lost a great author and a close friend of the publishing house. Roy was a storyteller of rare skill, an exquisite stylist, immensely knowledgeable, and with a heart for the overlooked and forgotten aspects of our history. This was particularly evident in his fervent interest in Northern Norway, which he wrote about so warmly and in such detail, notably in The Victors and the Barrøy series of books. These novels, which reached hundreds of thousands of readers, are a joy to read. But they are also complex and intricate, filled with turns of phrase that the author had weighed and considered countless times. Internationally, he is highly regarded. Financial Times described The Unseen as 'blunt and brilliant,' an especially precise description that could be applied to much of his work, without in any way summarizing it all. For us at the publishing house, Roy was a conversationalist and a good friend, someone who offered book recommendations, enjoyed disagreement and a good debate, who often sent messages from his many travels, and was wonderful to talk and laugh with. The magnitude of this loss for Cappelen Damm is almost inexpressible. We are in mourning. But the loss for his family and closest relatives is the greatest. We send our warmest thoughts to his wife Anneliese, with whom Roy co-authored the book The Man Who Loved Siberia. Our thoughts also go to his children Maria and Daniel, his grandchildren, and the rest of the family."

One of Norway's Greatest Authors

Roy Jacobsen received most major Norwegian literary awards, including the Tarjei Vesaas' Debutant Prize, the Critics' Prize, the Youth Critics' Prize, the Riksmål Prize, the Booksellers' Prize, the Gyldendal Prize, and was twice nominated for the Nordic Council Literature Prize. His novels The Woodsmen (Hoggerne) and Wonderchild (Vidunderbarn) were both nominated for the prestigious international IMPAC Award, and both The Unseen (De usynlige) and White Ocean (Hvitt hav) were nominated for the European Literature Prize in 2017 and 2022, respectively. In 2017, Roy Jacobsen was shortlisted for The Man Booker International Prize for The Unseen, becoming the first Norwegian author ever to achieve this. In September 2023, Jacobsen was awarded the Order of St. Olav for "his outstanding authorship."

Roy Jacobsen developed his writing from a notable debut in 1982 with the short story collection Prison Life (Fangeliv) (which was awarded the Tarjei Vesaas' Debutant Prize) to become an original, strong, and analytical author with a particular interest in the underlying psychological dynamics of human interaction. However, it was with the generational novel The Victors (Seierherrene) (1991) that he experienced his breakthrough. It became a popular read and solidly cemented its place in the Norwegian literary canon.

His body of work encompasses a number of other central novels, such as Wonderchild (Vidunderbarn) (2009), which became a major bestseller. So too did The Unseen (De usynlige) (2013), White Ocean (Hvitt hav) (2015), Rigel's Eyes (Rigels øyne) (2017), and Just a Mother (Bare en mor) (2020). These four books tell a piece of Norwegian history depicted from a grassroots perspective. Here, Jacobsen writes about the Barrøy family, who live on a small island far out at sea on the Northern Helgeland coast. This series further strengthened Roy Jacobsen's position as one of our most widely read authors.

But he also showed curiosity for entirely different parts of the world and places, as in The Man Who Loved Siberia (Mannen som elsket Sibir) (2019), the novel about the natural scientist Fritz Dörries, which Jacobsen co-authored with his wife Anneliese Pitz. The same year, he published On the Verge of Vigeland (På randen av Vigeland) (2019), a small, personal book that reached a wide audience. In 2022 came the novel The Unworthy (De uverdige), about a group of boys and girls in Oslo during the German occupation. With this group of children, Jacobsen painted a brutally honest and warm portrait of an environment, a time, and a daily life that had previously been virtually absent from war history.

As Jonas Bals wrote in the newspaper Klassekampen on the occasion of Jacobsen's 70th birthday: "Jacobsen makes us wiser about both our own history and our role in the world today."