Vigdis Hjorth: Uproar over Autofiction
– Norway
While Czech and Slovak readers are still awaiting translations of some of her more than twenty works, the author (born in 1959) is a true celebrity in Norway. One of her recent novels caused a sensation and sparked a societal discussion that filled the pages of newspapers for a long time. Her book Will and Testament became a Norwegian cause célèbre. The protagonist, a mature woman in her fifties, shatters her own family by claiming that her father abused and raped her when she was a young girl. The narrator, who shares many biographical details with the author, speaks in a first-person voice that is so direct and persuasive that the author's own family considered the book autobiographical and strongly objected to the use of family details in a work of fiction. Hjorth leaves the answer to the question of where the line between fiction and reality lies in the novel unanswered, and no one in her family has any contact with her. She stated that she was driven to write autofiction, a genre that blurs the line between fiction and autobiography, with the intention of exploring what the voice of a person who needs to tell a story that no one wants to hear sounds like.