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Homo falsus
A Tale Told by a Modernist Postmodernist: Jan Kjærstad's Homo falsus

Homo falsus is widely regarded as one of the best known examples of postmodern Norwegian literature. My discussion of the text includes the following items:

  • an overview of the extant scholarship on Homo falsus
  • a "proof" of its postmodernism
  • a discussion of how the text's two narrators, one male and one female, can be read as a single postmodern individual
  • a discussion of how the text contains two superimposed stories: one modernist and one postmodernist

The beginning of my article appears to the right --> and there is a link below that to download the entire article.


Homo falsus
Jan Kjærstad's Homo falsus

You can also read my detailed biography of Jan Kjærstad in Twentieth Century Norwegian Writers: Dictionary of Literary Biography. I don't get any royalties for it, so I heartily recommend you borrow it from the library.

The beginning of my discussion of Homo falsus:


How could a Javanese Buddhist temple, Greta Garbo, and a salad fetish be integral to understanding a novel set in contemporary Oslo? Is it more likely that three men are missing because they were murdered or because they vanished into thin air during sexual intercourse? Jan Kjærstad explains that while "Den klassiske fysiker ville si: Hvis to beskrivelser utelukker hverandre gjensidig, så må minst én av dem være feil. Bohr sa: Begge er nødvendige for en full forståelse" [The classical physicist would say, "If two descriptions are mutually exclusive, then at least one of them must be wrong." Bohr said, "Both are necessary for a full understanding"] (226). While Bohr was referring to the fact that light displays properties of both a wave and particles, Kjærstad is talking about the growing trend of novels in which there are dual narratives that are mutually exclusive and none the less both necessary to understand the text. Jan Kjærstad's Homo falsus eller det perfekte mord [Homo falsus or the Perfect Murder](1984) is just such a text. Although seemingly mutually exclusive, the three men are both murdered and vanish into thin air during sex. Both readings are necessary for a full understanding of the text.

This chapter contains four sections. In the first, I provide an overview of the extant scholarship on Homo falsus. In the second, I demonstrate that Homo falsus is indeed a postmodernist text and discuss why some people have trouble recognizing this fact. In the third and fourth sections I contribute two original complementary readings of the text, showing in the first that the text's two narrators, male and female, can be read as a single postmodern individual and in the second that the text's two narrators can be read as aspects of a single individual telling two versions, one modernist and one postmodernist, of one story.

Click HERE to download the full text of this chapter.

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© 2005 Tara F. Chace