Robert Ferguson

Robert Ferguson (born 2 June 1948) is an English-born Norwegian biographer, dramatist, novelist, and translator who specialises in the history and culture of the Scandinavian countries, and Norway in particular.

Life and work Robert Ferguson was born in Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffordshire, and grew up in Blackpool, Lancashire. Between 1968 and 1976, he travelled widely in the UK and worked at numerous jobs, including postman, builder's labourer, trawler fisherman, hospital porter and factory hand. He also spent periods living in France and Denmark.

Between 1976 and 1980, he studied Scandinavian literature at University College London, specialising in Norwegian literature.

In 1980, Ferguson made his debut as a dramatist with an adaptation for BBC Radio 3 of Knut Hamsun's 1890 novel Hunger.

In 1983, Ferguson was awarded a one-year State Scholarship by the Norwegian government. He has been a permanent resident of Norway since that time. He became a Norwegian citizen in 2018.

Ferguson has written ten original radio plays and adapted for radio works by Hamsun, Henrik Ibsen, Halldor Laxness, A.R. Luria and Elmore Leonard, all for the BBC. For his original dramas he has twice won Giles Cooper Awards for Best Radio Drama of the Year. He is the author of two novels, Siste kjærlighet and Fleetwood, published in Norway only.

Enigma. The Life of Knut Hamsun, won the University of London's J.G. Robertson Prize in 1987 and was shortlisted for the Los Angeles Times Best Biography in 1987. Enigma, under its Norwegian title Gåten Knut Hamsun, was dramatised as a six-part television series in 1996 by NRK (Norwegian State Broadcasting) and was the basis for a .

In 1997, Ferguson selected, translated and introduced Tales of Love and Loss, a collection of twenty of Hamsun's short stories. He has also translated books by numerous Norwegian writers, including Jo Nesbo and Lars Mytting, whose Norwegian Wood. Chopping, Stacking and Drying Wood the Scandinavian Way won the British Book Industry Award for Best Non-Fiction Book of 2016.