Ola Bauer
| Ola Bauer | |
|---|---|
| Born |
24 July 1943 Oslo, Norway |
| Died | 12 June 1999 (aged 55) |
| Occupation | novelist, playwright, journalist |
| Nationality | Norwegian |
| Notable works |
Graffiti (1976) Humlehjertene (1980) Rosapenna (1983) |
Ola Bauer (24 July 1943 – 12 June 1999) was a Norwegian novelist and playwright. He made his literary debut with the novel Graffiti in 1976, under the pseudonym Jo Vendt. Among his best known books are Humlehjertene (1980), Rosapenna (1983), and Metoden (1985). Bauer was awarded Gyldendal's Endowment in 1982, and the Dobloug Prize in 1998. He died of cancer in 1999.
Bauer was born 24 July 1943 in Holmenkollåsen, Oslo, during the German occupation of Norway. His father was a baker, and an active member of the Norwegian resistance movement. In 1943, he was arrested, while the rest of the family went undercover in Hadeland. Bauer's father was eventually deported to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, where he died three months before the end of the war. Bauer's family continuously moved from place to place, and Bauer had a hard time adjusting to the changes, and finding friends. He found himself consistently making friends with children of traitors, those who had supported the Germans during the war. "We were all innocent children, who had to pay for our fathers' choices. We could understand each other", Bauer later said. He used to make up stories about his father's death, a new version for every new place his family moved. He graduated from Oslo Språkskole in 1965, on his second attempt, "with a D in Norwegian, as usual".
Bauer started his literary career translating short stories from Danish to Norwegian for Allers. He quickly advanced to becoming sports reporter for Det Nye, and later a traveling journalist for Vi Menn. He stayed in Paris for more than a year in the late 1960s, and later traveled around Africa. From 1972 on he made frequent visits to Belfast, and made many friends there.
Bauer had grown up with the notion that his father was a war hero, having died as a prisoner of war. As an adult, he learned that his father had in fact died of methanol poisoning, having gotten hold of what he thought was alcohol. In his autobiographical debut novel, Graffiti (1976), Bauer confronted his mother with the fact that she had kept this secret from him. "I grew up in a lie about a man I have never known", he commented. Because of the novel's contents, one of his relatives insisted that he publish it under a pseudonym, to protect his mother. Despite "having nothing to hide [him]self", he therefore released the novel under the pen name Jo Vendt.Graffiti was very well received by critics. Roar Petersen of Verdens Gang noted the poetic quality of many of the passages in the novel.Johan Borgen described the debut as "measuring 7.3 on the Richter earthquake scale".
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