Georg Johannesen

Georg Johannesen (22 February 1931 – 24 December 2005) was a Norwegian author and professor at the University of Bergen.

From 1960 to 1963, he was a high school lecturer and 1964–69 a freelance author and writer. In 1969 he joined the University of Bergen as assistant teacher at the Nordic Institute. He was a senior lecturer in Scandinavian literature from 1977, associate professor in 1981–86 and in 1996 he was appointed professor in rhetoric.

He drowned while on vacation in Egypt in 2005.

Writing career Georg Johannesen's entered the literary scene with a novel, Høst i mars ( (1957), a tender love story with a tragic denouement about romance in the face of bourgeois prejudice. The novel was followed by three collections of poetry. The first of these, Dikt 1959 (1959), deals with temporal subjects. The second collection, Ars moriendi (1965), is structured around a rigid formal arrangement inspired by the Seven deadly sins of Christianity. The last, Nye dikt (1966) is more politically driven.

Johannesen's love for paradox and delivering political messages in his work continued in Tredje kongebok (1978), Johannes' bok (1978) and Simons bok (1980). These works were laden with paradox and irony, literary devices Johannesen often worked with. These works were allegorical, shedding light on some of contemporary Norway's problems. The Norwegian drilling for offshore oil was presented in a satirical manner in the novel Mongstad (1989), which Johannesen published under the pseudonym Kathy Johns.

Awards Gyldendal's Endowment – 1966 Diktartavla – 1997 Cappelen Prize – 1999 Halldis Moren Vesaas Prize – 1999 Norwegian Academy Prize in memory of Thorleif Dahl – 2000