Maria Navarro Skaranger

WINNER

Norway-Maria Navarro Skaranger

Biography

Maria Navarro Skaranger (1994) was born and lives in Oslo. She has studied writing at the Academy of Creative Writing in Hordaland and comparative literature at the University of Oslo. As the author of just two books, Skaranger displays an impressive preciseness in the way she brings up relevant themes with great originality. Her debut novel All the Foreigners Have Closed Curtains (2015) is the first Norwegian book written in a consistent multi-ethnolect from a diverse Oslo suburb, her language absorbing expressions from different countries and backgrounds. The novel received much attention and was awarded the First Novel Prize. The film version of the novel was launched in Norwegian cinemas in March 2020. Her second novel, Bok om sorg (Fortellingen om Nils i skogen) (Book of Grief (The Story of Nils in the Woods)), was published in 2018 and won the Oslo Prize the same year. In 2019, she was one of 12 contributors to Homeland, a presitigous anthology co-edited by HRH Mette-Marit, which explores what it means to be Norwegian.

Nominated book : Bok om sorg (Fortellingen om Nils i skogen) (Book of Grief (The Story of Nils in the Woods))

Summary

Book of Grief (The Story of Nils in the Woods) is Maria Navarro Skaranger’s second novel. Nils, a young man of around 30 years old, has taken his own life. Through anecdotes, seemingly trivial events and memories, his sister tells the story of the family before and after Nils. It is the story of a boy who was already a loner as a child, a young man who never really found his place in society, in education, at work or among friends. Nils’ mother and his siblings are trying to find a way to live on after Nils, and it turns out to be three very different tracks to follow.

Norway

Excerpts

Related publications

Various authors

Special publications
2023

Various authors

Anthology
2020