Literature and Fiction · Hardback

A Long Night on Earth

Norwegian title: En lang natt på jorden

Ingvar Ambjørnsen

Sixty-year-old Claes Otto Gedde, a former Norwegian TV presenter and journalist, has passed the pinnacle of his career and is now on the wane. He’s beginning to realise that people are laughing behind his back. He’s been in Belgium for a few months writing a book about traditional Belgian cuisine, which is to be launched at the book fair in Frankfurt. The book wasn’t a great success. Now he’s looking forward to hibernating in Berlin for the winter, staying in the flat of a dead female friend. He just wants to lie in the dark and listen to the distant sounds of Berlin, knowing that the door is locked and no one can come in. But he doesn’t get the peace he wants.

Ingvar Ambjørnsen has written a deeply human, cutting and entertaining novel about a man who feels his life is approaching its end, but gets another chance amongst the living, something which he couldn’t possibly have imagined.