Lars Amund Vaage
Photo courtesy of Aschehoug, Oslo.
Shearsman Titles
Outside the Institution — Selected Poems
About the author
Lars Amund Vaage was born 1952 in Sunde in Sunnhordland on the west coast of Norway, south of Bergen. He taught at a primary school for a year after having graduated in natural sciences in 1972. He studied the piano at the Bergen Music Conservatory from 1974 to 1975, and literature at the University of Bergen. From 1975 to 1985 he worked part or full time as a music teacher, journalist, builder, truck- and bus-driver. He made his literary debut in 1979 and has since published ten novels, a book of short stories, two collections of poetry, a play and several translations, including works by Lorine Niedecker and Joy Harjo. He has also written a long poem about the glacier for the opening of the Folgefonna national park and texts for Tord Gustavsen's recent Jazz Requiem. He has received many literary prices, among them the Aschehoug Publisher's prize for his novel Rubato (1995), the Dobloug prize from the Swedish Academy (1997), the Gyldendal Publisher's prize (2002), the Radio Listeners' prize for his novel Kunsten å gå (The Art of Walking) and the Emmaus Prize in 2005 for his novel Tangentane (The Piano Keys). His novel about the psychiatrist Wilhelm Reich's time in Norway, Den framande byen (The Strange City, 1999), was regarded as controversial when published. His work has appeared in German, Russian, Hindi, Polish as well as English. He is considered one of the most original and accomplished Norwegian writers of his generation.
In its commentary the jury for the Aschehoug Prize said that Vaage is an "unusually refined literary artist, sensuously symbolic, concrete and succinct, and with something as rare as a loving irony".