Edvard Hoem made his literary debut at twenty and has distinguished himself as a prizewinning novelist and playwright. His most celebrated works are novels in which he simultaneously exposes the ills of Norwegian culture and explores the difficulties faced by individual characters, often with special focus on the plight of women and a sense of the loss of traditional ways of life. His narratives are often praised as allusive and stylistically innovative. Hoem has also garnered attention as a controversial cultural commentator and political activist. He is a proponent of the minority Nynorsk language, an opponent of Norway's joining the European Union, and a critic of the Norwegian social democracy that, in his opinion, nurtured but ultimately disillusioned the children of his generation.

Hoem was born to Knut and Kristine Nylund Hoem in the rural community of Fræna on 10 March 1949. His upbringing prepared him for the...