Lars Amund Vaage was born in 1952 at Sunde, Kvinnherad on the west coast of Norway, and studied classical piano at the Bergen Music Conservatory.
He made his literary debut in 1979 with the novel Exercise Cold Winter, and has since published award-winning novels, short stories and collections of poetry, and a long essay on the art of storytelling, Sorrow and Song, 2016.
It is also the key to the way this established novelist needs to find in order to tell his life-changing story, which for many years and many different reasons he did not think would be possible.
In Sorrow and Song he expands on this decisive moment and sheds light on other insights into the art of writing, such as the relevance of music and rhythm in prose, and how fiction offers a certain freedom of speech which confessional literature does not.
Art seems to offer the hope of insight and understanding, but its gatekeepers can be implacable; and how do you find love, and live with it, if you have never known it at home?