1983 Peter Seeberg, Denmark: Om fjorten dage
About the author
Peter Seeberg was born in the small village of Skydstrup in southern Jutland. His home was imbued with a harsh and guilt-ridden pietistic religiousness. His father was a teacher and died when Peter was 12. Peter Seeberg graduated in literary history, but later shifted to archaeology and coupled his writing with work at the regional museum of Viborg. In fiction, he mainly wrote novels and short stories, but he also worked as a playwright.
About the winning piece
Om fjorten dage is a collection of short stories with a number of unobtrusive stories written in a low-key language with simple, concrete expressions. A mild sense of humour speckled with understatements pervades the short stories. His outlook couples a universal sense of unreality and an ensuing aspiration after the basic life, simple and concrete. In his view of life, Peter Seeberg was thus close to absurdism and existentialism. He categorically denies any type of transcendence: “To maintain a life in the mortal context, in intimate settings is the only worthwhile thing to do. You can call that my credo.”
Om fjorten dage
Published by: Arena
Publication year: 1981
This is what the Adjudicating Committee had to say
In his prose work "Om fjorten dage" Peter Seeberg has, innovatively, with precision and mastery and through a game with many time perspectives, given quiet human lives a mystic dimension.