|
New from Arcadia Books
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unpublished, Bjørnstad gives the reader a lively and intimate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
|