The Story of Edvard Munch
by Ketil Bjørnstad
Translated from the Norwegian by
Torbjørn Støverud & Hal Sutcliffe
B FORMAT PAPERBACK * 5th SEPTEMBER * £8.99
‘Invaluable for anyone interested in the great Norwegian painter. Drawing heavily from Munch’s extraordinary writing, most of which is unpublished, Bjørnstad gives the reader a lively and intimate account of an artist whose love and suffering became his work’ – Siri Hustvedt
Ketil Bjørnstad is one of Norway’s leading novelists, composers and contemporary musicians.
Arcadia is publishing their B format edition of The Story of Edvard Munch to coincide with the Royal Academy’s major Munch retrospective (1st October – 11th December 2005) and Ketil Bjørnstad’s UK concert tour
Damaged in childhood by appalling family tragedies, the Norwegian painter Edvard Munch was obsessed with sickness, insanity and death. His life was tormented by persecution mania and emotional and physical fragility. Relationships with women foundered in loathing and mistrust, friendships frequently turned to enmity and violence, and his dark, difficult genius was misunderstood. Yet his tortured and shockingly personal art, which at first provoked outrage, eventually gained him fame, wealth and the respect of the art establishment that had rejected him, and of his native Norway. In a single year, no fewer than eleven exhibitions of his paintings were shown throughout Europe, and the city of Oslo built a museum to house his work.
Using Munch’s own letters and diaries and those of his contemporaries and friends, as well as newspapers and journals of the time, Ketil Bjørnstad’s ‘literary biography’ - which can also be read as a novel - presents us with a picture of Edvard Munch as unsparingly true as any of his self-portraits.
‘A dazzling tapestry which has the weight and inevitability of myth’- Daily Mail
Ketil Bjørnstad’s novels include The Personal Motive, The Storm and Villa Europa. He has also written a biography of the Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg. Bjørnstad, an accomplished pianist and composer, lives in Oslo. He is available for interview.
For further information please contact Gary Pulsifer or Daniela de Groote at Arcadia Books info@arcadiabooks.co.uk For information on his concert tour contact Diana Spielberg at Serious : diana@serious.org.uk