Beate Grimsrud

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Beate Grimsrud (born April 28, 1963 in Bærum , Norway ; † July 1, 2020 in Stockholm , Sweden ) was a Norwegian writer and film director .

Life

Beate Grimsrud grew up in Norway and from 1984 lived in the Stockholm district of Södermalm . On the island of Biskops-Arnö in the municipality of Håbo , she attended the well-known writing school. She wrote books in both Swedish and Norwegian . She quickly developed an unmistakable voice, with a very special reception of the surrealistic and absurd tradition, with great linguistic sensitivity at the same time.

She made her debut in 1989 with the short story collection Det fins grenser for hva jeg ikke forstår (for example: There are limits to what I do not understand). After her debut novel Continental Heaven , published in 1993, she wrote six more novels and three children's books with the Swedish writer Inger Alfvén .

Grimsrud's breakthrough came with her second novel Å smyge forbi en øks (1998), which depicts the world from the perspective of an idiosyncratic and vulnerable girl. Lydia's family, including six siblings, is impoverished and partly finances their livelihood by selling things found accidentally on a rubbish dump. The novel is made up of short, heterogeneous chapters, a technique that she would later cultivate further. The novel Søvnens lekkasje (for example: The Leak in Sleep) from 2007 consists of around 60 short stories that often follow a dream logic. Characters from Grimsrud's earlier novels as well as from world literature return in the texts. Performances include, for example, Sisyphus , Dostojewski's Raskonikow and the anonymous first-person narrator from Knut Hamsun's novel Hunger . Grimsrud took up some topics again in her novel En dåre fri , published in 2010, which presents a typical character of the author with the sensitive Eli: She lives alone in her apartment, but shares her life with Espen, Erik and Emil, three people with whom they are actually voices. Eli spends her days in a psychiatric institution , where she is on the one hand understanding and on the other hand is grossly mistreated. Social criticism and liberating fantasy go hand in hand - as is often the case with Grimsrud.

In addition to the literary work, Grimsrud increasingly emerged as a filmmaker. Her documentary Noen spørsmål om boksing (about: Some Questions About Boxing) from 1999, which won the Amanda Prize , portrays women in the boxing ring. Grimsrud himself practiced the sport for many years. She contributed the script for the feature film Ballen i øyet (2000) , which also shows clear parallels to her own life. The focus of the film is a severely visually impaired girl who one day gets a ball in the eye while playing soccer and becomes unconscious. In addition, Grimsrud wrote other scripts and radio plays .

A few weeks before Beate Grimsrud's death, her last novel Jeg foreslår at vi våkner (literally: I suggest we wake up) was published in 2020 , which received rave reviews and was immediately perceived as a central work in Grimsrud's oeuvre. The protagonist of the novel is the Norwegian playwright Vilde Berg, who lives in Stockholm, who learns that she is terminally ill. In a linguistically furious roller coaster ride, in which desperation, constant therapy sessions and burlesque humor alternate, reality and dream passages cannot always be distinguished.

Before her death, Grimsrud discussed her cancer in several interviews . On July 1, 2020, she died in Stockholm after a long illness.

Awards

In 2000, Beate Grimsrud received the Swedish Radio Novel Prize, endowed with 50,000 crowns, for Å smyge forbi en øks . She is the only writer so far to have received this award twice, as she received the award again in 2011 for En dåre fri . Both books have also been translated into German, the former being published under the title An An An Axt vorbeeschleich in 2006 by the Cologne-based small publishing house Tisch 7 and the latter published in 2014 by the Munich publishing house btb under the title Crazy and Free .

In 2011 her book En dåre fri was nominated for the Nordic Council's literary prize - something that had never happened before, by two countries (Norway, Sweden) at the same time.

Further awards (selection):

  • Aftonbladets litteraturpris 2002 for Hva er det som fins i skogen barn?
  • The P2 Audience Award 2007 for Søvnens lekkasje
  • Critics' prizes 2010 for En dåre fri
  • Dobloug Prize 2011 for her complete works

Works (selection)

Novels

  • Continental Heaven (1993).
  • Å smyge forbi en øks (1998).
  • Hva er det som fins i skogen barn? (2002).
  • Søvnens lekkasje (2007).
    • Excerpts in German translation in the literary journal Literaturbote , no. 135/136, Frankfurt am Main 2019, ISSN 1617-6871.
  • En dåre fri (2010).
  • Evighetsbarna (2015).
  • Jeg foreslår at vi våkner (2020).

Children's books

  • Clearly finished gå! (2007, with Inger Alfvén ).
  • Alba og Adam (2008, with Inger Alfvén).
  • Dinosaurene og de dansende trærne (2009, with Inger Alfvén).

Short stories

  • Det fins grenser for hva jeg ikke forstår (1989).

Documentaries

  • Noen spørsmål om boksing (1999).
  • Det pleier å gå bra (2010).

Scripts

  • En film om fotboll (1996).
  • Ballen i øyet (2000).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Beate Grimsrud , forfatterweb.dk
  2. ↑ Biskop Arnö-eleverna blev författare , unt.se
  3. ↑ Beate Grimsrud , albertbonniersforlag.se
  4. ↑ Mode Steinkjer: Beate Grimsrud minneord: Stemmen mellom ytterpunktene. In: Dagsavisen. July 1, 2020, accessed July 1, 2020 (Norwegian Bokmål).
  5. ↑ Tarjei Mo Batalden: Beate Grimsrud er død. In: NRK. July 1, 2020, accessed July 1, 2020 (Norwegian Bokmål).
  6. ↑ Kaja Kirsebom, Mina Hauge Nærland: Beate Grimsrud er død. In: Aftenposten. July 1, 2020, accessed on July 2, 2020 (Bokmål in Norwegian).
personal data
SURNAME Grimsrud, Beate
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Norwegian writer and film director
DATE OF BIRTH April 28, 1963
PLACE OF BIRTH Bærum , Norway
DATE OF DEATH July 1, 2020
Place of death Stockholm