POETRY: Kosmos' baby by Gunnar Wærness, and Collection by Erling Kittelsen are two books that have a similarity in how they extend away from the personal (author) self and borrow voices from the environment. The latter makes fun of the cultural tourist and New Age consumer who attends evening classes in Sufism one month and shamanic drumming the next.
AESTHETICS: In Kiøsterud's eco-philosophical text, 'beauty' becomes a riddle as much as a solution, a question as much as an answer. Is it possible to find beauty on nature's own terms – a beauty you cannot own?
FICTION: In Kiøsterud's quiet recluse novel, life is weighed against the pain in a quest for reconciliation. Nature remains silent and ambiguous, even when the protagonist tries to step aside with his demands for meaning.
COMPROMISE: The book by artist Leonora Carrington is a journey into the jungle of surrealism, a successful escape from the conventional and a fantasy infiltration of the established.
ECOLOGY: In autobiographical form, Kiøsterud continues his rethinking of modernity in the era of the eco-crisis. He points to a normalized brutality that most tacitly accepts.
All the short stories remind me, in their own ways, that we should all die. Holtet Larsen's language is a cultivated language, an advanced language, is a language for the sake of language.