Two years after receiving the 2023 Nobel Prize in Literature, Norwegian writer Jon Fosse returns with Vaim, his first novel since the award. Published today, 23 October 2025, by Fitzcarraldo Editions, the 120-page work appears in English translation by Damion Searls.
Inside Jon Fosse’s Vaim
Vaim follows Jatgeir, who sails from his island home to the city of Bjørgvin on his small wooden boat, Eline, named after his long-lost love. After being cheated in town, he hears Eline’s voice calling to him once more, and she decides to leave her husband and return with him. The novel unfolds as a quietly haunting triangle, a story of love, loss and the strange pull of return.
Vaim is also the opening volume of a new trilogy set in the same coastal landscape. Fosse has hinted that the books will follow different lives connected to the village of Vaim, continuing his exploration of memory, faith and the unseen rhythms that bind people to place.
Early Praise for Vaim
The book has already drawn acclaim for its characteristic rhythm and atmosphere. Writing in the Financial Times, Bekah Waalkes calls Vaim “as strange and surprising as life itself,” while Ania Szremski in 4Columns describes it as “full of doubts about language and communicability… carried along in the anxious mutability of drift, wake, current, float.”
Jon Fosse and the Unsayable
Born in 1959 on Norway’s west coast, Jon Fosse has written novels, plays, poetry and essays over four decades, earning comparisons to Beckett for his minimalism and spiritual intensity. The Swedish Academy awarded him the Nobel Prize “for his innovative plays and prose which give voice to the unsayable.”
Fosse’s Longtime Translator
Damion Searls, who translates from Norwegian, German, Dutch and French, has played a crucial role in shaping Fosse’s English-language presence. His translations of Fosse’s works are celebrated for their rhythmic delicacy and restraint, an approach that mirrors the silence and repetition at the heart of Fosse’s writing. Beyond Fosse, Searls has translated Rilke, Proust and Thomas Mann, and is himself an accomplished writer and essayist.
Fitzcarraldo Editions and the English Fosse
Fitzcarraldo Editions, the London-based independent press known for its minimalist blue-and-white covers, has been central in bringing Fosse’s work to English-language readers. The publisher has previously released Morning and Evening, A Shining and the acclaimed Septology trilogy, which established Fosse’s quiet, meditative prose among English-language audiences.
Vaim is available now from Fitzcarraldo Editions.
