Publishing House Founded by Two Writing Alumni Introduced Nobel Laureate Jon Fosse to the U.S.
Transit Books, a Bay Area-based publishing house founded by Writing alumni Adam Levy ’12 and Ashley Nelson Levy ’12, is largely responsible for the circulation of 2023 Nobel laureate Jon Fosse’s work in the United States.
Transit Books, a non-profit founded in 2015, focuses on international literature, releasing a carefully curated collection of six to eight fiction works a year. In addition to the Nobel, authors published by Transit have been nominated for the Booker International Prize, the National Translation Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Windham-Campbell Prize among other awards.
The Levys claimed to experience a melange of shock and delight in reaction to Fosse’s win.
“We set our alarm for 4 a.m. [that] morning (California time) because we knew it was a possibility that Jon could win, but neither of us was prepared for that news when we woke up,” wrote Nelson Levy in an email interview with the L.A Times. “We jumped out of bed and started answering emails and phone calls and swigging coffee, while trying not to wake up our two kids.”
Jon Fosse’s writing, which is primarily in Norwegian, is translated into English by Damion Searls and has been characterized as “hypnotic” and “prayer-like.” Septology, a multi-tome novel including The Other Name, I Is Another, and A New Name, is considered to be Fosse’s magnum opus and was a finalist for the 2022 National Book Award, the 2022 International Booker Prize, the 2022 National Book Critics Circle Award, and was named a Best Book of the Year by The New Yorker and Bookforum.
“Something I’ve continued to tell people about Fosse’s writing, and thinking of Septology in particular, is how page-turning it is,” writes Nelson Levy. “It’s about art, God, death, love — who we are and what determines who we become...He’s also got a great sense of humor. You can feel his playwriting sensibilities at work in a lot of the novel’s dialogue.
Septology is written in the form of a single-sentence monologue spoken by an aging artist. Levy writes that while publishing such an undertaking appeared daunting, Fosse’s inventiveness aligned well with Transit’s mission.
“There are always a few daunting aspects of publishing a 700-page, single-sentence series of books about doppelgangers on the western coast of Norway meditating on life and art,” he said. “But this is exactly the kind of work we founded Transit Books to publish: bold, imaginative, brilliant works from around the world. And though you can never really anticipate the kind of recognition Fosse has received with the Nobel, we’ve worked hard to raise his profile here and introduce his work to a broader readership.”
Fosse’s new novel, The Shining, will be released by Transit Books later this month, and Levy asserts that the slim volume is a great introduction for any newcomers to the author’s work. The dreamlike novel is about “a man who finds himself stuck at the end of a forest road, and father than seeking help he ventures into the woods, where he's confronted by a shining presence in the darkness. It's like if Beckett had written the Pine Barrens episode of The Sopranos,” Levy said. “It's the perfect way to jump-start anyone's Fosse fandom.”"
The Shining is available for pre-order here.