5 must-read authors from Norway to add to your bookshelf

Scandinavian literature is having a moment. While natives have known of the ability of writing in the region to capture an immense rawness and to provide a jolt, accompanied by a keen grasp of character, grim wit and biting candor, these characteristics have only relatively recently began enchanting broader international audiences.

For newcomers, Norway is an excellent starting point for a departure across the literary map of Scandinavia. From naked, authentic realism to decade-spanning page-turners, Norwegian literature will easily draw you in - and sometimes leave you reeling.

Below is our hand-picked selection of writers from Norway that you will find hard to put down.

Norwegian literature's most popular export, Karl Ove Knausgård is known as a pioneer of the autobiographic fictional novel – autofiction for short. His 4.000 pages long, six volume spanning My Struggle is massive and incomparably captivating. A blunt meditation about a man drinking coffee, smoking cigarettes, and doing everyday things may not sound like the ultimate page-turner, but when you learn that there were reports of waves of employees across Norway calling in sick whenever a new volume of his work was released, you begin to get a sense of the hold his words can have over people. Don't blame us if you end up similarly addicted.

There's a distinct unpleasantness that makes Vigdis Hjorth so intriguing to read. With over 20 novels, Hjorth is one of the leading figures in contemporary Norwegian literature – a position that has come with a lot of controversy. In 2016, her autofiction work Will and Testament, in which a woman in her fifties revisits the sexual abuse and rape suffered at the hands of her father as she is sucked back into arguments with a family she'd become estranged from, caused a sensation. Her sister replied by writing a counter book accusing Hjorth of unfaithful narcissism and reams of press coverage followed. Setting aside the scandal, Will and Testament can also be seen as a compelling response to #MeToo, dealing with the need of a victim to be heard and believed, no matter the implications.

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His international breakthrough may have come back in 1984 (with the publishing of his novel Yesterday), yet one of Christensen's finest works remains curiously under-the-radar. The Nordic Prize winning The Half Brother weaves a story of four generations of a Norwegian family over the course of 50 years. Beginning in the wake of World War II, the book centres around Fred, a misfit and boxer conceived by rape, and the special relationship he forms with his younger half-brother Barnum. With his unconventional saga, Christensen shows a fondness for the grotesque while building marvellous characters and displaying a literary craftsmanship that makes him a definite must-read.

Since the age of 17, Merethe Lindstrøm has written numerous short stories and novels, but especially notable is her novel Days in the History of Silence, published in 2011. The story circles around the suppressed past of an old couple, with Simon becoming ever more silent as Eva starts to remember. The beauty and the quiet terror of the book explores the aftermath of concealment. Lindstrøm won the Nordic Council Literature Prize for the novel and one thing is for sure, it will shake you softly to your core.

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Kjersti Annesdatter Skomsvold found immediate international success with her debut novel back in 2009, a work that remains as relevant as ever today. The Faster I Walk the Smaller I Am deals with the question of leaving a mark in the world. After a lifetime, Mathea Martinsen feels she has not accomplished anything of importance – in fact, she is scared she will die before she does anything memorable. And so, she heads out into the world. The novel is a haunting commentary in an era when most of us put work first and everything else second, and a smart addition to your bookshelf.