Hanne Ørstavik

Hanne Ørstavik (born 28 November 1969) is a Norwegian writer. She has published sixteen novels and her works have been translated into eighteen languages. She is best known for Kjærlighet (Love), the English translation of which won the Pen Translation Prize and was shortlisted in the translation category of the US National Book Awards. She has also won the Dobloug Prize, the Brage Prize, the Amalie Skram Prize, and the Gyldendal Prize.

Life Ørstavik was born in Tana Municipality in Finnmark county in the far north of Norway. She moved to Oslo at the age of 16. She studied French, psychology and sociology at the University of Oslo and in 1993-4 attended Forfatterstudiet i Bø (The Writers' School in Bø).

She is trained as a Rosen Method therapist and has practised this alongside her writing.

Her translation of Leslie Kaplan's book L'Excès – l'usine from French into Norwegian was published in 1998. The novel centres on a young boy and his mother and takes place over a single night in the far north of Norway.

Her next two novels, Like sant som jeg er virkelig (1999, As True as I am Real or This is What I Really Am, English translation The Blue Room, 2014) and Tiden det tar (2000, The Time it Takes), also focus on family life and difficult parent-child relationships, and the three are sometimes seen as a trilogy on unhealthy family relationships. In Tiden det tar, during a family Christmas visit, the protagonist recalls traumatic childhood memories involving her father’s violence towards her mother. Kallet – romanen (2006, The call – the novel) features a woman missionary and writer and once again addresses the failure of language to adequately convey reality, as the protagonist struggles with her readers' misunderstanding and with her own attempt to write an account of her grandmother's life. The first of these is 2019's Roman. Milano (Novel. Milan), in which the narrator, who was left behind in Norway as a child when her parents moved to the US, goes to Milan to be with the curator of an art gallery.

This was followed by Ti Amo (2020, English translation Ti Amo, 2022), a work of autofiction which describes the death of the narrator's husband. Like Ørstavik, the narrator is a writer who has recently moved to Milan to live with an Italian publisher, who subsequently dies of cancer. The novel also continues to address issues of representation, with the narrator struggling to speak only truth. The Times Literary Supplement said that "it bears the shadow of experiences so raw that they overwhelm the possibility of reflection, embellishment and transformation – that is to say, of fiction."

Awards and recognition Ørstavik has received a number of literary prizes. In 2002, she was awarded the Dobloug Prize for her literary works, She was awarded the Amalie Skram Prize in 2002.

In 2024, Ørstavik was awarded the Gyldendal Prize, Norway’s richest literary prize awarded every two years to an author for their entire body of work. Previous winners include Dag Solstad, Jon Fosse, Vigdis Hjorth, Karl Ove Knausgård and Per Petterson.

Ørstavik’s books have been translated into eighteen languages.

In 2018 Archipelago Books published Kjærlighet (1997) as Love, translated by Martin Aiken. Her first novel to be published in the United States, Love was shortlisted for the National Book Awards in the category Translated Literature and won the 2019 PEN Translation Prize. Love was published in the UK by And Other Stories in 2019. It was longlisted for the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation.

Since then, three more of Martin Aiken's English translations of Ørstavik's novels have been published: The Pastor (2021; Norwegian: Presten, 2004), Ti Amo (2022; Norwegian: Ti Amo, 2020), and Stay With Me (2024; Norwegian: Bli hos meg, 2023).

Works Novels 1994: Hakk 1995: Entropi 1997: Kjærlighet Love, translated by Martin Aitken (Archipelago Books, USA, 2018) , (And Other Stories, UK, 2019) 1999: Like sant som jeg er virkelig The Blue Room, translated by Deborah Dawkin (Peirene Press, 2014), 2000: Tiden det tar 2002: Uke 43 2004: Presten The Pastor, translated by Martin Aitken (Archipelago Books, USA, 2021) 2006: Kallet - romanen 2009: 48 rue Defacqz 2011: Hyenene 2013: Det finnes en stor åpen plass i Bordeaux 2014: På terrassen i mørket 2017: Over fjellet 2019: Roman. Milano 2020: Ti amo Ti Amo, translated by Martin Aitken (Archipelago Books, USA, 2022) 2023: Bli hos meg Stay with Me, translated by Martin Aitken (And Other Stories, UK, 2024)

Other 2007: I morgen skal det være åpent for alle (text) 2008: Der alt er klart (text and images, in collaboration with the French artist Pierre Duba)

Awards no:Tanums kvinnestipend 1998 NRK P2 Listener's Prize 1999, for Like sant som jeg er virkelig Sult Prize 1999 no:Havmannprisen 2000, for Tiden det tar Oktober Prize 2000 Dobloug Prize 2002 Amalie Skram Prize 2002 Klassekampen's Literary Award 2004, for Presten Brage Prize 2004, for Presten Aschehoug Prize 2007 PEN Translation Prize 2019, for Love (trans. Martin Aitken) Gyldendal Prize 2023