Backlisted - Rerun - The Ice Palace by Tarjei Vesaas

Episode Date: August 17, 2026

Returning to a show we made in 2022. The Ice Palace or Is-slottet by Tarjei Vesaas is a 20th century classic by one of Norway’s greatest modern writers. First published by Gyldendal in 1963, it went on to win the Nordic Council Literary Prize in 1964. In 1966, it was published in Elizabeth Rokkan’s English translation by Peter Owen who described it as the best novel he ever published. To discuss it we’re joined by friend of the show Max Porter – who’s surprised it isn’t the most famous book in the world – and by another great Norwegian, Karl Ove Knaussgård, who agrees but who also think’s Vessas’s The Birds (or Fuglane), published six years earlier, might be even better. We discuss both books in their English translations (recently released as Penguin Modern Classics) and Karl Ove treats us to a reading from the beginning of The Ice Palace in Norwegian. This episode also features Andy sharing his pleasure and deep amusement at Bob Dylan’s latest book – The Philosophy of Modern Song (Simon & Schuster) while John is moved by Emergency, Daisy Hildyard’s darkly beautiful novel about a rural Northern childhood overshadowed by presentiments of the coming climate disaster (Fitzcarraldo Editions). * To purchase any of the books mentioned in this episode please visit our bookshop at uk.bookshop.org/shop/backlisted where all profits help to sustain this podcast and UK independent bookshops. * For information about everything mentioned in this episode visit www.backlisted.fm *If you'd like to support the show and join in with the book chat, listen without adverts, receive the show early and with extra bonus fortnightly episodes and exclusive writing, become a Patreon - the first week is free - at www.patreon.com/backlisted *You can sign up to our free monthly newsletter here  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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You're richer than you think. Hi, it's Andy. And it's John. And Nikki. Hi, everybody. Welcome to another backlisted archive special. Yes, we are rerunning this time. a book which we feel is remarkably appropriate for the weather that we're having.

It's Tahrie Vesas is the Ice Palace from November 22. And it's a, as you all discover, it's a cool podcast in all senses of the word. It features Max Porter and the great Norwegian novelist, memoirist, Karl Ovei Klousgard, on one of the great, in fact, too, You get two for the price of the one on this podcast, because although it's about the Ice Palace, it's also, there's a fair bit of discussion

of his other great translated novel, The Birds. There's a reason for that, isn't there, John? There is a reason for it. Which is that that's the one that they, well, certainly that Carol Ove, I think he basically wanted to talk about that more than he wanted to talk about the Ice Palace, I think.

Although, to be fair, as you will discover, he talks not a lot, but very, very incisively and insightfully about both of them. He's saying what he lacks in airtime, he makes up in points. Cool. Very much the coolest. Yes, it's me and John providing the quantity, and Max and Karlov providing the quality. Also, can I just blow a little trumpet for my colleague?

I had forgotten this is the podcast where Andy talks about the philosophy of modern song by Bob Dylan and reads a brilliant passage about Ethers Costello's Pump It Up, which he says on the audiobook version of which, half of it is delivered by Bob in his most Bob way, and the other half by bizarrely Helen Mirren. But that is an absolute treat in store for you. We were still at that stage.

Yeah, we were still doing what have we been reading? So you talked about philosophy on the song. What did you talk about? I talked about the kind of, again, rather appropriate, emergency, Daisy Hilliard's dark kind of rural northern childhood 1990s novel

coming climate disaster, which I'm sure feels massively topical to a lot of people out there listening. So, yeah, it's a good one. It's a good one. It's not hot, but it is cool. Nikki, why don't you tell us

what's happening on the Patreon? Yeah, we have been in our Booker Prize show, posh bingo over on the Patreon if you listen now if you sign up now you can get a free week subscription by the way if you sign up now you can listen to Heat and Dust

by Ruth Prava Jabrallah Heat and dust versus the Ice Palace you see what we've done there Exactly and you've got a month to join us in our kind of We're not calling it a book club But let's just say it's a bit like a book club Yeah

We're not calling it a book club But yeah. No, but if you were to think of it like a club, the next book we're reading is disgrace. By disgrace by Jim Kertzaya, which won the Book of Prize in 1999. Yeah, and we're all reading that together on Monday the 7th of September, 26. So yeah, that's over on the patron. And the final thing that's coming out next week is that we're joined by one of our backlisted patrons in our readers show.

and that's Dan Jenkins and he is bringing a fabulous book called Maureen Duffy called Capital and there's a show with me and Una and Dan Jenkins which is really excellent

so yeah lots of really good things on patrons Two things to say Maureen Duffy the great Maureen Duffy only died a few months ago so this is a lovely way to celebrate her long career

and all the important work that she did and also Dan is a contributor very much after our own heart he read about six other Maureen Duffy novels in order to prepare for this show but it was worth it

it's a really really good show so that's happening over on the Patreon which you can find at www.w.patron.com forward slash backlisted anything else any other business before we hand you over to the ice pops only that it's a cracking book if you haven't read Ice Palace

you should go and read it quite so and super small which is obviously after a book that I appreciate. Small but packed with deep spiritual kind of latent spiritual meaning, as you will discover. And if that doesn't make you want to switch off, I don't know what we'll. Right.

Enjoy the show, everybody. See you next time. Bye. Hi. Bye. Hello and welcome to Backlisted, the podcast that gives new life to old books. Today, you find us in the depths of rural Norway, sometime in the mid-20th century. It's very cold.

and dark enough for stars to appear, and a hard frost covers the ground. The young girl strides purposefully down the road, wrapped in a thick coat, her forehead all that is left exposed, her eyes fixed on the road ahead. A long-drawn-out crack echoes like a gunshot. It is the ice moving in the lake below. I'm John Mitchinson. And I'm Andy Miller, author of Year of Reading Dangerously, and today we're joined by two guests,

one returning and one making their debut. Welcome back Max Porter and welcome Karl Ovec now Scard. Hello, both of you. Hello. Hello. Carl Ove is a Norwegian writer whose work including the six-volume sequence My Struggle, The novel A Time for Everything, the Seasons Quartet, and most recently in English, The Morning Star has been published in 35 languages.

He has published 22 books spanning fiction, non-fiction, essays, and biographical portraits of Edvard Monk and Anselm Kiefer. Early next year, there will be a publication of the paperback of Karlow's collection of essays in the land of the Cyclops. He is joined by Max Porter, who was last with us back in August 2019. Goodness me, it feels like a long time ago, to talk about Ridley Walker in our live recording at the Port Elliott's Festival. Incidentally, if listeners, you've never heard that particular episode.

It is genuinely one of our favorites, partly because of the readings by Max and by Una McCormack from the remarkable novel, Ridley Walker, in front of a live audience, totally captivated by what they heard. A really magical, magical moment. I felt it was anyway, Max, did you feel that? It felt really special, that one. Yeah, I have really warm memories of that time, partly because of it was at Port Elliott, wasn't it? And that's a thing of the past. It can no longer be again. So yes, I loved it.

We finished our chat about Ridley Walker and I went and got a pint of beer and jumped in the estuary. That's how we try and finish every episode of that list. Also, I kept on thinking about that book. Yes. I know we all do. We have all kept on thinking about that book ever since any of us first read it. But it's a nice kind of staging post in my lifelong thinking about that book. I think we could record another episode on that book, no problem at all.

and say an hour's worth of totally different things as well. Different things. You know what I mean? So rich. And before that, Max, you joined us for episode 32, where we talked about the many virtues of the horse's mouth by the Irish writer Joyce Carey. Max is the author of three novels and his fourth shy

will be published by Faber and Faber and Grey Wolf Press in spring 2023. His work has been translated into 30 languages. But the book we're here to discuss is a 20th century classic, the Ice Palace or Is Slote by Talje Vesas, one of Norway's greatest modern writers, first published by Gildendal in 1963. It went on to win the Nordic Council Literary Prize in 1964. In 1966, it was published in Elizabeth Rockand's English translation by Peter Owen,

who described it as the best novel he ever published. Max Porter agrees. He's surprised it isn't the most famous book in the world, but we'll also be discussing the The Birds, or Fuglana by Vesas, published six years earlier and which CarloVey thinks is even better. Anyway, before we start strapping on our skis and bearskins, Andy, what have you been reading this week? Well, I'm really happy to say that I've been reading the new book by Bob Dylan, which is called The Philosophy of Modern Song. As you know, Bob Dylan is an author who's published several books. He published Tarantula in the early 1970s. That's his novel.

and he published writings and drawings, which is a collection of his art, his essays and his lyrics. And he published Chronicles, which is one of the best music books ever written. All right-thinking people would agree with that. And ushered in a wave of music books in its wake. And now he's written this book, The Philosophy of Modern Song, since which time, of course, the Published Chronicles, he has won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Tarye Vassos was nominated 50 times for the Nobel Prize for Literature, or thereabouts. Bob Dylan was nominated twice, I think I'm right in saying, and won on the second occasion, controversially.

I reckon this new book came about because some enterprising editor or agent went to Bob's people and said, you know that radio program it used to do, theme time radio hour in which Bob would read links between records that he'd chosen. It was a terrific show. It ran on the internet. I think there are two, maybe three seasons of it. And I think this book probably came about because somebody said to Dylan's people, you know, I reckon there's a book in that if we just got Bob to put down his thoughts about artists or music or people that he likes.

And this is the equivalent. What you get is Dylan writing about all manner of records, some of which you might expect, such as Detroit City by Bobby Bear. or ball of confusion by the temptations, obscure stuff like doesn't hurt anymore by John Trudell, Dean Martin's in here, Blue Moon, it's all in the game, Tommy Edwards. But I'm going to read to you from early in the book where Bob shares his thoughts about pump it up by Obis Costello and the attractions. And this made me laugh out loud when I was walking through the city in which I'm currently living

last week because on the audiobook version of the philosophy of modern song, Dylan has recorded parts of it seemingly in an echoing corridor outside a dressing room while out on the road somewhere. And then one of a number of celebrity readers takes over from Bob. So you start by listening to Bob, and 80 year old Bob, a bit like that. And then pump it up. The celebrity who takes over the audiobook juices from him is Helen Mirren. Which is quite a jarring contrast. But this is also wonderful, this description of Pump It Up. I want you to imagine the first section I read.

I'm just going to say Bob Dylan. I won't do the voice. Bob Dylan, and then I'm going to say it goes to Helen Mirren after that, okay? Pump It Up, Elvis Costello, originally released on the album this year's model, Radar, 1978, written by Elvis Costello. And now here's what Bob Dylan has to say. This song speaks new speech. It's the song you sing when you've reached the boiling point. Tense and uneasy comes with a discount, with a lot of giveaway stuff. And you're going to extend that stuff till it ruptures and splits into a million pieces. You never look back, you look forward. You've had a classical education and some on-the-job training. You've learned to look into every loathsome nauseating face and expect nothing.

You live in a world of romance and rubble, and you roam the streets at all hours of the night. You've acquired things and brought people the goods. This song is brainwashed, and comes to you with a low-down, dirty look, exaggerates and amplifies itself until you can flesh it out, and it suits your mood. This song has a lot of defects, but it knows how to conceal them all. Okay, so that's what Dylan says about it, and now here's what Helen Mirren says about it. Elvis is one of those guys whose fans fall somewhere between the two poles of passion and precision. There are people who tick off the boxes of his life with the same obsession of someone completing a train schedule,

while others don't know anything beyond the fact that he sings a song that accompanied a particularly devastating breakup. Very seldom a cheery wedding song, but plenty of breakup songs. Knowing a singer's life story doesn't particularly help your understanding of a song. Frank Sinatra's feelings over Ava Gardner allegedly inform, I'm a fool to want you, but that's just trivia. It's what a song makes you feel about your own life that's important. Elvis Costello and the attractions were a better band than any of their contemporaries. Lightyear is better.

Elvis himself was a unique figure. Hornroom glasses, quirky, pigeon-toed and intense, the only singer-guitist in the band. You couldn't say that he didn't remind you of Buddy Holly, the Buddy stereotype, at least on the surface. Elvis had Harold Lloyd in his DNA as well. At the point of Pump It Up, he'd obviously been listening to Springsteen too much. But he also had a heavy dose of subterranean homesick blues. Pump It Up is a quasi-stop-time tune with powerful rhetoric, and with all this, Elvis exuded nothing but high-level belligerents.

He was belligerent in every way, even down to the look of his eyes. A typical Englishman or Irishman didn't matter how much squalor he was a living in, always appeared in a suit and tie. Back then, English people appeared in suits and ties no matter how poor they were. With this manner of dress, every Englishman was equal, unlike in the States where people wore blue jeans and work boots in any type of attire projecting conspicuous inequality. The British, If nothing else, had dignity and pride, and they didn't dress like bums. Money or no money. The dress code equalized one and all in Old Britain. Pump it up is intense and as well-groomed as can be. With tender hooks and dirty looks, heaven-sent propaganda and slander that you wouldn't understand,

torture her and talk to her, bought for her, temperature was a rhyming scheme long before Biggie Smalls or Jay-Z. submission and transmission, pressure pin and other sin just rattled through this song. It's relentless as all his songs from this period are. Trouble is, he exhausted people. Too much in his songs for anybody to actually land on. Too many thoughts. Way too worthy. Too many ideas that just bang up against themselves. Here, however, it's all compacted into one long song. Elvis is hard-edged with that belligerence that somehow he is able to streamline into his work. The songs are at top speed and this is among his very best. In time, Elvis would prove he had a gigantic musical soul,

too big for this type of aggressive music to contain. He went all over the place and it was hard for an audience to get a fix on him. From here on, he went to play chamber music, write songs with Bert Baccarac, do country records, cover records, soul records, ballet and orchestral music. when you are writing songs with Burt Baccarat, you obviously don't give a fuck what people think.

Elvis blows through all kinds of genres like they are not even there and pump it up is what it gives him a license to do all these things. Who doesn't want to run from this podcast straight to their copy of this year's model and pump it up, right? So this book is so enjoyable

And as you may have noted from Bob's thoughts on Elvis Costello, Dylan is nothing, if not king of the backhanded compliment. So I really, really enjoy this book with your eyes or with your ears. It's called The Philosophy of Modern Song. It's published by Simon & Schuster, and it costs 35 pounds. John, what have you been reading this week? I've been reading Emergency by Daisy Hildyard. It's her second novel.

Her first, Hunters in the Snow, got lots of terrific reviews, and then she wrote a non-fiction book. I keep worrying away, as listeners to this podcast will know, keep worrying away at books about the countryside, the pastoral novel. Ever since I think Salman Rushdie told me that it was a moribund dead form, I've always felt the need to go out and try and seek out pastoral novels that aren't. I spoke about Allam on the last episode, PJ Harvey's remarkable verse novel set in and around a Dorset village. Emergency is set in a Yorkshire village in the 1990s. The woman, the narrator, the unnamed narrator, is looking back on her childhood. And in very similar ways, it's kind of playing around in woods and quarries near her home, observing the kind of the difficulties of adult life,

while also closely observing the movements of nature. And also, I suppose, the emergency in the title is all of this lovely pastoral stuff is happening in a world that's slowly choking to death and dying, and pesticides and plastics, the stuff of late 20th century childhood are part of the problem. somehow Daisy Hildyard manages in her episodic way to make a really beautiful and kind of

I wouldn't call it a page page turning novel but I read it very quickly and found it completely captivating. Certainly if you're a fan of Daisy Johnson's Fenn or Fiona Mosley's Elmett or Sarah Hall's short stories or dare I say it

Max Porter's Lanny you're going to find this book attractive and rewarding. Anyway, the kestrel is hovering close to the mole. And she looks at the mole. I could see him intimately now. His features were precise and miniature, acorn cup ears, thread fine whiskers radiating in all directions,

and tiny hand-shaped feet. His whole body was vibrating violently. He seemed unable to move. The kestrel had paused again, and my gaze moved up and down, drawing a direct line between them like a lift between two floors of a building. I felt a sense of love arise inside me,

as huge and widespread as the vole was small and specific, and it occurred to me that I could rescue him. I knew what this would mean because I'd done it before. When the huge black rabbit who lived in a run in our garden had a nest full of babies, my parents had told me not to touch them. I sat outside the hutch and waited for them to be revealed when their mother rolled aside, tiny pink squirming things,

which were in the process of becoming from day to day, delicate versions of their parents. When they were a week or so old, skin's skill visible through a sheen of black fur. My mother explained why I wasn't to touch them. The rabbit would eat her babies if they had a strange smell on them. I held my hands in front of my face, but they didn't smell like anything except faintly soap.

Anyway, she takes, of course. one of the little rabbit pups. And then, of course, she returns it. The following day, I went to see the rabbits, and the mother was alone in her run. She was truly a big rabbit. I watched her for a while. She seemed calm, nibbling dandelion leaves,

and I felt a sense of affinity with her because we had done it together, destroyed the babies with our colossal care. Even today, she seems to me very human in the way her principles forced her to self-destruct and in the scale of her appetite which far exceeded what she needed to survive, those dandelion leaves.

I don't mean that the rabbit was much like a person, more that principles and will, amongst most other qualities, memory, love, are not exclusively human traits by any reasonable definition. All creatures have character. Really great little book.

It was weird reading that in the same week, that I was reading Vesas because there's definite sense of the weird allegorical relationship that we have perhaps with nature or that nature has with us. Okay, so what's the name of the book? That is Emergency by Daisy Hildyard, published by the ever-excellent Fitzgeraldo editions. Great. Back to Torgia Vesas and the Ice Palace. It was Nikki Birch, our producer, who first alerted us to the short but brilliant novel

in our summer reading episode back in 2020. It's the story of Siss and Un, two 11-year-old girls. Sis is popular and outgoing, an un more reserved, an orphan and newly arrived at the village school. They are powerfully and mysteriously drawn to each other. Shocked by the intensity of her feeling after Siss visits her at her auntie's house, Un decides she will skip school the next day to visit the waterfall on the river that the other children have mentioned. The weather has been so cold it's frozen the water, fall into a huge and complex pillar of ice, alluring and terrifying in equal measure.

The fallout from that decision fills the book's final 80 pages, written in a deceptively simple language. It explores love, guilt, sexual awakening, and a complex relationship with nature in a way that is profoundly original and memorable. How simple this novel is, wrote Doris Lessing. How subtle, how strong, how unlike any other, it is unique, it is unforgettable, it is extraordinary. And these are all qualities the Ice Palace shared with another novel, The Birds, which was first published in 1957. The story of Mattis, a man in his late 30s who lives with his older sister.

Despite all because of his learning difficulties, he enjoys an intense relationship with the natural world and the ability to pose the deepest of philosophical questions. It's another quietly devastating story about low, loneliness and the difficulty we have making ourselves understood. Karl Ovei has called it the best Norwegian novel ever and said it would have been counted among the great classics from the last century if it had been written in one of the major languages.

And as we have Karl Ove here to develop that thoughts, let me ask you, we would normally ask you when did you first encounter the work of Tareé Vesas, but in a sense, I suppose what I would like to know is both that. And could you just put Vesas into context for English-speaking readers in terms of his importance in terms of modern Norwegian literature? Yeah. I can't say when I first heard about Vesos or learn about him at all

because he's like he's always there. Yeah, he's thought at schools and he's kind of... One of the most important writers. So he's in the canon. He's everywhere, really. So I just tried to write an essay about the birds for an anthology. And it was almost impossible because everyone knows everything.

So there's nothing to say about it, really. But then I reread both the Ice Palace and the Birds. And I found it that didn't really matter. It was all about presence, all about being in the book. It's all about being the book. there, which especially the birds too is about somehow. Max, when did you first become aware of either Versas or the Ice Palace specifically? I think I might have read the birds first.

I had a crush on the catalogue of Peter Owen. I'd read Silence by Shusako Enda, which I can recommend the backlisted podcast episode on. with Sarah Perry with Sarah Perry which is a great one and also the year of the hair by Artopastellina and both had had

rather a profound effect on me as well as some books of the see by Herman Hesse and Paul Bowles and I just thought well this publisher is perhaps the best publisher of translated literature you know I can't imagine that I would have another hit

with this publisher and then I read the Ice Palace and I think it's yeah certainly one of my very favorite books, but my experience of reading it was an almost spiritual revelation, really. But that was how I came to it. Yeah, my love of Peter Owens. And then someone who worked at Peter Owen heard that I was enjoying all these books and then came and gave me all the Peter Owen books. Gosh. Which started a kind of great binge of, you know, some of the greatest writers of all time, I think, really. Peter Owen binge, that's a, that's a thing. Yeah. That sounds like a thing.

Well, I told John in a message that when I was reading the birds this week, I opened it up, and my copy of the birds is actually signed by Verstos to Peter Owen. To Peter O. They gave them away the file copy. Oh, no. Signed July 68 with greetings for Peter. Wow. That is extraordinary. So I think I should probably give it back to them. It probably belongs in their archive.

Will you, though? you have to know I guess you fool Max you fool you fool you damn fool from what I can gather that the Ice Palace was the first of I don't know whether Versace had been published in in English any of his previous now he wrote 25 novels in all as I think Carlo V he was I mean he was yeah so he's much more prolific writer than we would

I mean these are the two that get talked about most in the in the English language world What kind of maniac would write that many books, Carl? I don't understand. He lived a long life. Before I come back to you, Culliver, Lusat-Arts Max, you glancingly referred to a spiritual experience there of reading the Ice Palace, right, the first time?

Yeah. Where is the spiritual element of the novel? Well, for me, it is in the broader kind of Versus universe, the relationship between human beings in the natural world. But particularly in this book, the way that that is set against a sort of devastatingly insightful portrayal of childhood, unease and affection and nameless emotional currents passing between different human beings, almost like a spiritual charge, be it erotic or political or whatever it is. He does that almost better than any writer I have ever come across to the point where it's as if the book

itself has an aura beyond its subject to do with the sort of potency of its truth, I think particularly about the relationship between the children and the adult and then the natural world. It gets into your skin in the way closer to the condition of music or visual art. And I think it was one of the first times I'd experienced that as a reader. At that time in my life, I would was as we all are all the time, and searching for work that, for the truth, for fight for work that kind of goes beyond

what I felt to be the kind of mannerisms of the social realist novel or whatever it was. It kind of cut through what I deemed to be a certain artificiality at work. And because perhaps of what you've said, you've mentioned as the kind of allegorical features of his work, or partly because of the sheer spaced out

the extraordinary aesthetic that he achieves, as well as the kind of brutal honesty of his portrayal of mental processes and social processes, it was revelatory to me, as, as, you know, as Talis was when I first heard it or something. I'm sort of reaching around for comparisons, but there wasn't really anyone I first read it.

I thought I had found a higher form. He's the sort of brighter that you might apply this to a filmmaker or a musician or a chef who is clearly operating to a well-works-out aesthetic, but you don't know what it is. And part of the appeal as a reader is trying to puzzle this out from the infer it from the clues contained in the writing. There's a real steady sense of,

I am telling you this because this is so important to how I see the world and how I create. And I always find that very seductive, actually. I find that that makes me want to sink into the work. And I'd never read him before we did for this. And I don't want to, you know, copy you, Max, and say it was spiritual. But it was certainly incredibly stimulating to think, oh, great, I don't know what the rules of this are. That's so appealing to me. It's very interesting also. You mentioned that his worldview,

his way of looking at things, appears in two girls that are 11 in one book, and in an idiot, in another. So it's two places in society where normally nothing of value is going on, you know. It's like it's beyond what's important. And there, there it happens, which I think is, interesting in itself and a big part of his genius really to go there. And also that strikes me also to have something in common with the realm of the spiritual and as much as the more difficult questions of forgiveness, tolerance, taboo. These are questions that are in the darker corners of the dogma of the church or the moral preachings of religious leaders and that.

And as you say, he just goes straight to them. with a kind of unfussiness, with a kind of representational clarity that is so rare that it strikes one as profound. And also there's no trickery, there's no showmanship about it. It's utterly direct. These books strike me as incredibly honestly built. There's no sort of theatrical strategies at work really beyond the sort of depth of their investigation. And I find that incredibly impactful as a reader. Don't you also find it?

I mean, I think of how many ways that story of a new child at school could be told. Usually you would expect her to be bullied. Every point, it seems to me, he kind of, and that's a really great way of describing that you're not sure what rules he's adhering to. You know there is a set of rules. Yes, that's the point. Yeah. But every point it seems to me he undercuts the kind of the lazy narrative

expectation of what this, oh, this is a coming of age novel, oh, this is about girls in school and kids arguing that the kids don't actually bully un. And the way he paints that relationship between the two girls seems to me to be, I mean, you know, it's a book you have to read and reread to get the full marrow of meaning, I think. Yeah. I'd like to ask Oliver a very difficult question. Oh no. Which is, I'm so sorry, but I assume you haven't read the translations that we've read. So we're reading him in English. Yeah. And I wonder what the distinguishing traits of his prose are in Norwegian. It's very simple and very, very melodic and very, I think the comparison to music is very relevant. And there is a thing with Vesos is that he writes a new Norwegian.

We don't have to go into that, but it's the same as Jun Fossa, basically. And it's unthinkable. Jun Foss is unthinkable without Taya Vesos. Foss's first book is like a continuation of Vesos somehow. And then he develops in his own. But the simplicity is key. And the musicality as well, it's funny that the simplicity I think is there in the translation. The musicality, I think, is much harder for a translator to capture.

I don't know, John, what you think? I don't speak Norwegian, but I love the sound of it, and I love the kind of the rhythm of it. We'll probably read a couple of extracts. I don't think you'll get the full effect of that in English, because English is such a mongrel language. But I think the idea of this being, you know, you were saying talus, you know, kind of its polyphonic, music. It's not harmony. You've got two different strains that are running at the same time. The theme of un and then the theme of cis in one, rather like the sort of the theme of matis in the birds and the theme of his sister. They're kind of, they're not harmonies. But they are polyphonic,

spatial, three-dimensional. They feel like the spaces in them are really important. When you're a mid-sized business, you need to be a small business. You need to be a very small business. You need need every competitive advantage you can get. Like an AI solution that works for you, not against you. SAP Grow is built with AI embedded at its core, working across every system. And it's ready to go from day one so you can hit the ground running. Bring it with SAP Grow, AI Cloud ERP for any size business. Well, listen, why don't we show not to tell?

Max, could you read us a little bit of what? from one of the English translations. And then I might ask Karl Ove to give us his reaction to whether he feels it's capturing the sense of the Norwegian original. Yeah. I had forgotten, and perhaps I don't know how it is for you, Carl, having not read these for some time and returning to them now, but I had forgotten some of the more audacious stylistic flourishes at work in these books,

particularly in the birds with what's happening in Mattis's mind and how he formulates that as a sort of almost like a sort of prophetic radical visionary you know he has these sort of visionary you know hildegarde of bingen style blasts occur in his mind and i and i had forgotten that in the texture of these books anyway this is the ice palace they had finished their walk it was black night auntie had gone the rounds they came to sis's house first a single lamp shone waiting for for her. There was no sound. Well, here we are. And I'd like to say, began Auntie, but Sis said quickly, no, I'll see you home. Oh, no, don't bother. I'm not afraid of the dark. I'm sure you're not, but may I? Yes, of course you may. They set off once more. The sleeping house with the

waiting lamp wheeled away. The road was deserted. They began to feel a little tired. I'm not cold, not a bit, said Auntie. And Sis ventured to ask, what will you do in the place where you're going to live? She did not know where it was. It had not been mentioned. Auntie was used to seeing everything on her own. Oh, I shall have to busy myself with something or other. I'll find something, she said. I've sold the house, too, you know. Don't worry about me for an instant, sis. No. I'm a worthless creature, said Auntie shortly afterwards when they were nearing her house, nearing the end of the evening. She began again, worthless. The people here have done everything for me during this misfortune, and now I'm going like this when I ought to

take my leave properly. What do you think, sis? she asked when sis made no reply. I don't know what to say. And so I've been thinking that since you've been with me this evening, they'll get to know that I went the rounds and that I did it as a way of thanking them. There's that, too. I've counted on your telling them about it, and I'd be grateful if you would, though I know that only a worthless creature would think things out like that. And now they would have to say goodbye. They were floating almost at one with the darkness reflecting no light. Their footsteps could not be heard, but their breathing could and perhaps the heart. They mingled with other almost inaudible nocturnal stirrings, like a small vibration in long wires.

Afraid of the dark? No. Bright woodwind players had appeared and were walking along the sides of the road. Brilliant. Bright woodwind players Yeah. I know. But and this, it has to be said,

this is, this is the moment in the book you think. Previously, at the beginning of the book, when she's walking the streets, she is scared of the dark. She confesses she's scared of the dark cyst. And she won't look at the sides of the roads because there are voice, she hears voices, sinister voices from the sides of the road.

And somehow now by this point in the narrative, they've become kind of woodwind, melodious woodwind. It's an astonishing It's an astonishing trick up the sleeve of a writer to do that. It reminded me

well it did a weird mental trick to me this time, Carlo, which is that it reminded me of Giotto, who I've been thinking about for a project, which in turn reminded me of your book on Angels. Your second book into English, maybe, your first, but I I felt that there was this use, as you said, John, of repetition and mirroring,

that you have this sense of her alone in the dark, and you suddenly have this sense of her with a potentially infinite number of consciousness is human and non-human around her, which is terrifying and beautiful. It's an amazing piece. Carlo, what is this like for you to hear English speakers? discuss the rhythms, textures and themes of one of Norway's greatest writers. Is this overlap with how you would feel about it, or is the Venn diagram and the circle separate? No, it's absolutely wonderful to hear, and that is actually happening.

I think every post I met who actually have read him is a fan or really loves. it. But there is something very nice about it because if you grew up in Norway, you're used to him, you know, you can wear writers out, you know, too much of them. But to discover him, I wish I could read him for the first time again. But still, I do take pleasure in reading him again and again, which I actually do. And did the translation you just heard, did it feel right? Yeah, yeah. Good. Yeah. Great. Who is that? Who is that? Who is the translator, we should give them credit where credit where it's due.

Elizabeth Rockand for the Ice Palace. Yeah, it's just on a really good job. Carlo, you talked about how he's articulating you know, outsider figures or people who were not paid attention to. Yeah. Did he see himself in those terms? Yeah, I think very much so.

Right. He grew up in a farm. I think it was born 1898 or something. and he was expected to take over the farm and it was no way he couldn't do it but still his urge to write was so strong that he actually pulled out and became a writer which probably was the hardest thing

he could be at that time and then he felt bad about that throughout his life so if you see interviews with him he's talking about feeling guilt about doing nothing just sitting looking you have to defend it it really is a problem for him.

And then you see the places he goes are where nothing is produced. You know, it's one of the key conflicts in the bird is that he's not producing. He's not functioning at all. So I think he somehow felt like, yeah, I probably felt like Matt is in the bird somehow, I think. And he was also a very silent man, didn't speak almost at all. If you send him, it could take like two minutes before he replies, and he will say yes. You know, it's like that kind of aura he has.

Let's get him on this podcast. Well, he got me. Yeah. There is a recording of him where he compares himself. He said the character he most identifies with, I say this, I don't, I'm going at secondhand, that he most identified with, with Mattis, who is, as we say, has, you know, would be classed as having learning difficulties, or on the autistic spectrum now, probably,

but as Matt says, is also has that kind of, it is that sort of wholly fool character, I guess, that he fulfills. Max, he reminds me, in some ways, not others, I'm going to say in some ways, not others, but he reminds me of a writer that you, Max Porter,

you were the first person to recommend I read, which is Haldor Laxness from Iceland. There's a kind of, I mean, Laxness is more sort of elaborate and rococo in style. Social, yeah. And indeed socialistic for SAS. But nevertheless, there is a kind of sense in the biography of sort of the audacity of becoming a writer in that era in a relatively small country is something that these two authors have in common. I think that's very true. and also the Finnish writer I mentioned before, Pasolena.

Maybe it's a modernist preoccupation, you know, apocalyptic modernism perhaps as well. You would find it perhaps in poetry from the UK at that time. But they are all, I think, it's funny what Carlova was saying about this sense of this guilt about being a writer or so, but maybe it's also this sense of the world storm occurring elsewhere and you not responding adequately to it, not being earning enough money or being strong enough or looking after doing your duty for the Icelandic sheep farmers in a way the same as the 11-year-old girl in the playground, this sense of the expectation of others and how that fractures not only yourself but also ultimately your language and your ability to be a voice.

so they have this deep, like, terror. These books are still quiet, meditative things, but within them is this sort of roaring concern, worry, yeah. I mean, it seems to me there's a delightful, constant shying away from the obvious, you know? In another novel, Un would be more obviously bullied at school. or sis would have a more difficult time with her family because this is what I meant earlier

when I said those rules don't apply here you know I find that scene near the beginning of the Ice Palace incredibly both meaningful and unknowable where the two girls meet in the room I can't account for it you know there's something uncanny about it do I resist shun do No

That was a bit I was thinking of reading the mirror scene because you're talking about patterning right eyes recurred throughout the Ice Palace including very memorably at the kind of the peak scene when she's when Un is inside the ice palace but this is the bit when they're

looking at each other simultaneously looking at each other in the mirror sitting and looking into a mirror mirror. Four eyes, full of gleams and radiance beneath their lashes, filling the looking glass. Questions shooting out and then hiding again. I don't know. Gleams and radiance, gleaming from you to me, from me to you, and from me to you alone, into the mirror and out again. And never an answer about what this is, never an explanation. Those pouting red lips of yours, no, they're mine. how alike. Hair done in the same way and gleams and radiance. It's ourselves. We can do nothing

about it. It's as if it comes from another world. The picture begins to waver, flows out to the edges, collects itself. No, it doesn't. It's a mouth smiling. A mouth from another world. No, it isn't a mouth it isn't a smile nobody knows what it is it's only eyelashes open wide above gleams and radiance

they let the mirror fall looked at each other with flushed faces stunned they shone towards each other were one with each other it was an incredible moment it's yeah

well maybe you know Carlo, when in between you reading this before and you're reading it now, what is your memory of that scene in the bedroom? What do you think of it as a scene in the novel between two characters? It is the central scene. It is what the start of the book leads up to. Because when Eun is there at school,

it's cis leading, she's a leader, she's the one who take care of the others. And Eun is just outside. and she refuses to go in there. And if she had gone in there, she would have been also under that, in that play. And she refuses to play. And when I want to meet, she doesn't want to go to sis. She wanted to take her home. She has something.

There is some sort of equality that has to be built up between them. But it's very ambivalent too. and it's incredibly how he managed to describe those kind of that relation between them without mentioning it or without, you know, naming it. And there is so much tension between them. And you don't know what the tension is, but it is incredibly well done. And then this merge of those two in one, and then they split up, and then she lives with her in the moment. months after and it's like it's and no i don't know what it is or what it where it takes me but i i said it's just it's just um yeah that scene is for me the kind of the center of the book

as as important as the ice palace in itself the way that scene echoes into the ice palace even after the last reading of the thing. Because when I reread it this time, which would be my fourth read of the book, I thought, well, this time, I'll understand something in that scene that makes explicable what follows. I'll glean something between them,

maybe it's an erotic thing, maybe it's something to do with the game they play, maybe there's more there that I miss. And obviously the fact that of it not being there is what is so precisely brilliant about. his evocation of childhood games and childhood language. It makes me feel horribly lonely and excited in the way I remember feeling as a child. Pre-linguistic, there's no vocabulary for it, which is a hell of a trick.

Gleams and radiance. It's light, it's light in this book is just, you know, the light of the, as you say, like the light of the palace and then the light of the thaw when it comes. And when someone's attention falls upon you And you crave it as a child And then you realize that it may be freighted With all sorts of terrible dangers as well And it's like a nausea It's a wobbly feeling in your belly

To achieve that without actually saying anything Is magnificent And then afterwards when Und disappears They desperately want to know What did she tell you Because she told her something What was that? What did she tell? tell you. And that's kind of a demand

from the outer world. And of course, she can't. She knows it. And that's very much what Versus is about. There's no way to tell it, but you know it. And it's the same in the birds. It's the same conflict. He knows something, but he can't tell it. And you as

a reader, you know it. It's that conflict with the inner and the author, and he's so incredibly good in capturing the inner without naming it or without anything. It's just floating around there, but you somehow get it, but I can't tell you what she meant to say either. I mean, it's ironic that the character of the two books that spends most time thinking in

some ways and trying to have theories is Mattis, who is, you know, the one who is supposedly whose brain is not functioning normally. I mean, I love his. Why are. things the way they are is his big insight is still, that is the basis of all philosophy. They're all theorizing about the universe and everything. Amazing. I've never read a writer who is less corny than Versus. Everything feels there's a rightness to it, even when you're groping for the understanding of it as you are in that scene with them sitting on the bed. It's so subtle. Calover, but help us, there's a contextual thing I'd like to know. You, obviously, we said earlier in the episode,

you rate the birds very highly. We don't get to read all of his works in English because they haven't all been translated into English, right? Is he one of those writers with one or two great books and then a following train of reasonably good books, or is he, in fact, incredibly consistent? and there are many more delights that we have yet to discover. There are many more delight,

but he started out as a kind of very traditional, very realistic writer with a kind of romantic touch, but it's very different and he very gradually developed from there. And then he was a lot in Europe. He loved absurd theater and kind of was very much influenced by modernism. and wrote and Kafka of course is also very important to him

and wrote his novel started to be more allegorically but in the same kind of setting and then it's the birds and then it's the Ice Palace which is highlights but all of those books his later period are somehow in one way or another great

but very different could be much more political or much more oriented to the World War or And in these two books and in his poetry, he kind of finds this balance between his first period and modernism and blends it into his own. Almost it's hard to see. I find it hard to read other influences in his writing.

He's very much in his own writer, I think. And he found that in those two books, I think, but also, yeah, some others as well. These are his masterpieces. But it's great pleasure to read his early work too. It's good, but it's not at that level, I think. Yeah. Okay. Interesting.

Can I ask a sort of personal writer-to-writer question? Do you warm to him as a person as someone as a Norwegian writer who has had a huge international acclaim? Do you sympathize with him? Is there a slightly, you know, in the kind of vertical axis, sometimes there is warmth, sometimes there is chilliness. Is there a warmth between you as writers in your mind? Between me and him.

If there is a warmth for me towards him. And the kind of right person he was, the way he dealt with success, the way he stayed to himself, etc. Yeah, very much. So he managed to protect his writing. And he was, he was, you know, in his late life, People came in the 60s, the generation writers in the 60s, that would be like beat poets or they admired him, started to admire him and kind of rediscovered him almost and they came. And he, I guess you would see, chilled out.

He was chilled out. Yeah, he was. Andy, should we play that clip of his daughter talking about him about writing? It's quite short and it would be lovely to hear a bit of Norwegian. And screye, I know best, all best, before

someone other were up and said he, and that is also a mind

that I have for a It was especially in the morning that he

wrote. He was an early bird. He worked best before

anyone else and got up in the morning and that's one of

the memories I have from many morning because me

and my brother's bedroom lay on the inside of his

writing room so sometimes when I up very early

I could hear the was very cold. The oven made a humming sound and he sat and mumbled when he wrote. And that was the best sound I could wake up to. We often fell asleep to the sound of him writing on the machine with two fingers. With two fingers, tap, tap, tap. It's just a very glott. Tap, tap, tap. We got that. I got that. I love that. I can imagine many children to write us who doesn't have that.

experience of the fathers. Let's get Max's children in right now. Oh, God. The sounds of him cussing. Tap, scratch, the kick of his lighter. There's a sense I have about him, a slightly Beckett sense about him. You know, that kind of very private, very, very, but very precise. about his work, you know, knows what he wants to do, but none of the kind of, none of the sort of

ego or the flouncing just. Yeah, I think that's true. The ego thing is, yeah, I think that's true. And it's there in the writing too as well. He's not, he's the opposite of a show of. Exactly. I think also there is, there is, maybe Beckett is a lovely comparison as well, because there is, the work is dealt with the most utmost seriousness, but there is always a twinkle, and it's the twinkle that I think is so humane in this work, that a little bit of humor or wit, even when terrible things happen.

I mean, at the end of the birds, it's done with tremendous lightness of touch, funny, fussy little details that warm it to us. Yeah, it's not so much taking yourself seriously. is taking the work so seriously, almost in a sort of sacred sphere, that you are still allowed to make jokes in the pulpit. No.

And we're going to have to wrap up in a minute, but I'm very keen, Karl Ove, that we hear some of Versailles' prose in the Norwegian, so we can hear the musicality of it. No pressure, no pressure, but we would love to hear that, please. From either book, yeah. Yeah.

So how much do you want to read? I can read from the opening of just a tiny bit of the opening of the Ice Palace, maybe. Yeah, that would be wonderful. The first couple of paragraphs of the Ice Palace, that would be wonderful. A young, quite pannet, panne, that boressarer from, gendor. A yearn, sis. In the grunnen, was it just after-biddag, but all-murked. Harforsen-haust,

Stierner, but no morn. to make light scheme so murkir was tett trusses to the an on the side was it

duttstil skug with all that might live and fris there in in the stun since

there many the time she got in balled for frost and she could be to the

half uncended young for first go to not to not

she didn't they for this spenern and why she said

man a a hucked mitt with these tanked of

A longed breast-awned, like, Bortover and bortover, Medan it dovna of. It was from the ice-in'p, on the store of the water for. And it was no farther. It was in the stardlegged. Rakey,

I've told that the iceen was even a grand-sterkere. It dunded as burses-kot, and sprang long, kniv-smalled, revna, from overflata, and a deep-need-d-dye-dnough. Like, well,

was the iceen sterker and sterker to quare morgon. then it had been an unvanly long and hard barfrost haust, gneistern of cullet. But culling was not sissed no crudder.

It was not that and stock forbark in murcher, but so set the foot stutt in the veganate. God, that was bloody wonderful. You should see, I listen as you can't see this,

but the smiles on the faces of me, Max, Paul, and John Mitchison while Carlovo was reading that. Thank you so much. It's just, it's wonderful. to hear the rhythms of it. It's beautiful.

And the feel of it. It's beautiful. Thank you so much. I'm afraid, sadly, that's where we must leave Un and Siss and Matis and Hager behind. Huge thanks to Max and Carlovo for the invitation to explore the strange and beautiful world of Versus's fiction. To Luke for making us all sound like we're on the same winter walk. You can download all 174 previous episodes.

plus follow links, clips and suggestions for further reading by visiting our website at batlisted.fm. You can also show your love directly by supporting our Patreon at patreon.com slash backlisted. What do you get for your money? Well, all patrons get to hear backlisted episodes early and advertising free

and for even less than Mattis's pay for thinning out two rows of turnips. Those who subscribe to the locklistin 11 get two extra podcasts every month. Thank you so much to our guests, Carla Vek-Nasgard and Max Porter. Let me come to you, Max, first with the now. This is a new tradition we've instituted since the last time you were on this podcast. Is there anything you feel we haven't covered or anything you would like to say

or anything you would like to tell the listeners about the work of Tayyé versus? Well, we didn't really talk about what happened in the book, and I'm delighted because I think it's something that people must discover for themselves. but as an English reader, I have in my life benefited so utterly, so totally and transformatively from the work of translators and publishers that take risks on translated fiction. So in America, these books are published by archipelago books in this country. They're published by Peter Owen and now by Penguin Classics, as you say,

and translated. We've mainly been reading the translations of Elizabeth Rockand, which strike me as pitch perfect. And just immense gratitude. And these books were smuggled to me, you know, by like secrets in the bookshop. And I would encourage people to do the same. They're not noisy, spectacular attention-grabbing books. They're books that live in you and grow and deserve to be re-read.

So I was just to encourage people to go out and support these independent presses and these translators that do this work. It's a miracle. A miracle. How perfect. Yes. How true. you. Kalovae, is there anything you would like to share with the English-speaking world

about the work of Talje Versus that we haven't been able to cover today that you feel we should know about his work? Yeah, well, it's, it's, when you read those books or when I read those books, it's like I'm completely filled up. They're so rich and there's so much going on. And when I want to talk about it, I can't say anything. It's like it's all in the reading experience. And that's also kind of what these books are about. You know, it's about the inner world and being not able to communicate it. And he's the one, I think, that is kind of, yeah, capturing that in such an amazing way. I really, yeah, I really love his work. And I, yeah. Yeah. But can't say anything about it,

so maybe I shouldn't have come to this show. No, I think you've done that's right. You know what? Admittedly, this is the love of a book that cannot be articulated. That's why we're here, listeners. And yet,

I guarantee you people will go from here and want to read these books. Yeah. I've found this really both the experience of reading the books and listening to you both talk about them has been revelatory to me. So thank you so much.

Thank you so much for sharing them with us. Absolutely. John, anything you would like to add to that in Comium? Yeah, I mean, I'm minded of our guest and friend, David Keenan, who has that phrase, holy books. These two books seem to me to be in as much as I can understand the concept of what is holy. They've definitely entered the pantheon for me. These are books I'll be reading and learning from for the rest of my life.

So thank you both for the opportunity to, to do that. Thank you, guys. Thank you. Okay, thanks very much, everybody. Thanks, Max. Thanks, Colo. Thanks, Jill Mitchison.

Thanks, producer, Luke. Thanks, Nicky Burch. Thanks very much. Thanks, guys. See you next time. Thank you. Bye-bye. Guys, that was absolutely,

that was brilliant.