Changes

|title=Professor Andersen's Night

|author=Dag Solstad

|reviewer=John Lloyd

|borrow=Maybe

|isbn=9780099578420

|pages=160

|publisher=Vintage

|date=November 2012

|summary=A more caring and considered Kafka, where a professor witnesses what seems to be a murder – and does nothing.

}}

A Christmastime in Norway. Spending his Christmas Eve alone, yet celebrating the age-old occasion the traditional way just by and for himself, is Professor Andersen. While taking time to muse on the party-hosting neighbours lit up in their own apartments across the way, he sees a young woman get roughly manhandled by what he thinks is a young man, after which their curtains are closed and suspicion is allowed to mount in the Professor's mind. He attends a dinner party – arriving far too early, to have the opportunity to talk the case over with his best friend – and goes away, spending many hours with his colleague, yet carries on doing nothing about reporting what he is sure was a murder. He and the relationship to the criminal in his mind are the basis of this short novel.

[[Novel 11, Book 18 by Dag Solstad|Novel 11, Book 18]] remains this author's best in English. For denser, possibly purer, modern modernism you might enjoy [[Satantango by Laszlo Krasznahorkai]].

{{commenthead}}