For India, chilly and remote Norway is the equivalent of the Antipodes — the land where everything’s done differently. But recently, in an attempt to connect these two utterly apart contexts, a group of writers under the umbrella of NORLA (Norwegian Literature Abroad) visited India. Herbjorg Wassmo became an important voice in the Norwegian canon in less than ten years, read in over 24 countries. Her Tora Books trilogy has swept up many awards including the Literary Critics Award (1982: The House with Blind Glass Windows), the Booksellers Award (1984: The Silent Room) and the Nordic Council’s Literary Prize (1987: Raw Sky). Her terrain is human interiority, the vulnerable child pitted against the social machine — which she conveys with a rare poetic sensibility. Lars Amund Vaage is also a poet and translator, besides having written several novels, plays and short stories. He was awarded the Critics Prize and the Aschehoug Prize in 1995. His short story, ‘Cows’ is a remarkable feat of song-like narrative. If all art aspires to the condition of music, as Walter Pater famously said, Vaage’s story is a masterful dirge for a dying agrarian world. “The calves are always the same. Just as children are still children... It is life that has changed,” he writes. For an Indian reader, these stories about strangers in strange lands make emotional sense. Amulya Gopalakrishnan caught up with the writers

• You both seem to be very preoccupied with the sense of loss, a loosening of traditional moorings. What’s the reason for this wistfulness, what’s the world you’re trying to pin down?

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