by Jon Fosse
First published 2026
The Guest pulls up to the Vaim Hotel with two suitcases and a leather shoulder bag. The place is empty. Brita, the owner, is blunt and commanding, and she looks at him as though she knows him. He has no memory of her at all. He has not yet decided how long to stay. He cannot quite remember what he packed. The next day he walks through the town of Vaim. He meets a shopkeeper. He meets a sailor. He eats dinner at the local restaurant, which Brita also owns. That evening he notices something is missing from his room. Then something else. His belongings keep disappearing. So does his sense of who he is and why he came. By degrees, debt accumulates. Obligations pile up. The Guest finds he cannot leave. He is caught in a cycle of servitude to Brita, bound to the town with no clear way out. The second book in Jon Fosse's Vaim Trilogy, this is a tight, unsettling story about a man who arrives with luggage and leaves with nothing, not even himself.
Genres: literary-fiction, contemporary, psychological-thriller, dark
Vibes: atmospheric, claustrophobic, haunting, introspective, unsettling
Tropes: gaslighting, gradual-descent, trapped-protagonist, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Vaim Hotel, Vaim
136 pages · Hardcover · Transit Books
Content warnings: emotional-abuse, gaslighting