Days With Diam Or: Life at Night

by Svend Åge Madsen

One of Denmark's most important experimental novelists, Madsen skirts around realism, but is never entirely realistic. Teasing and intriguing, this unique novel takes readers on a journey through shifting identities and psychological probabilities. The narrator meets himself in various guises, even sees himself through the window writing an account which, when he finally gains access to it, turns out to be in his own handwriting. Who is this narrator? And who is this Diam who appears in an array of guises ranging from the prudish to the lascivious? A figment of the imagination perhaps but of whose imagination? And what is the implication of the character without a story? In one chapter, Madsen explains the system behind the book. Readers will decide whether this explanation is the whole key to understanding this challenging novel. ""Madsen's thought-provoking story...raises fascinating questions about the permeable border between reality and imagination, and about the ways we create and recreate ourselves in life and in fiction."" - Publishers Weekly.

246 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1972

About the author

Svend Åge Madsen is a Danish novelist. He studied mathematics before he began writing fiction. His novels are generally philosophical and humorous.
Madsen's writing style and philosophy have placed him amongst the most distinguished and widely-read authors in Denmark today. His novels reflect the grave problems faced by the modern civilisation, and the interplay between quasi-realism and complete fantasy in Svend Åge Madsen’s novels leads to contemplation of the indefinable nature of human existence.

Reviews

[Mikkel Bøjer · Rating 5 out of 5]

(Book review) Dage med Diam eller Livet om Natten(1972) by Svend Åge Madsen
222 pages

I have read Another novel by Svend Åge Madsen, and again it is a masterpiece. The two main characters is great written. It is told in different alternative storylines, so it can be read many times to really get it.

10/10

[Andy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fiction writers are continually confronted with choices as to which of any number of alternative plotlines to go with at any given point in a story. In Days With Diam Or: Life at Night Svend Åge Madsen has accepted the challenge of not making definitive plot choices but, rather, allowing several interwoven storylines to proceed whereby, at the end of each chapter, the narrative splits and continues along two alternate paths as illustrated in a flowchart which is the book's table of contents. The idea is to illustrate a conception of life as a multiplicity of potential selves contained in each of us and realized according to what choices we make at every instant of our lives.


The result is quite fascinating and not at all gimmicky as might, at first, be suggested by such a didactic narrative strategy. The different variations of each storyline are further varied into a diversity of stylistic modes from straight realism to pure fantasy to a non-fictional discussion of the theory behind the book. In one variation, the narrator's love interest, Diam, in addition, undergoes a variety of tranformations of character and appearance. The narrator's thoughts, (it's all in 1st person), and the details of the proliferating story variations are continually reflecting, in some very creative and stimulating ways, the theme of the multiplicity of the self.

It's all thoroughly engrossing and I highly reccommend it.

[Jenny Webb · Rating 4 out of 5]

Madsen is fantastic, fun, and clever. I mapped out the book as I read it this time around, and was continually impressed with the overlapping narrative complexity.