Unflinching and with a certain wit, the Norwegian Tor Ulven reclaimed literature by restoring a depth of insight that it has generally lost on its way into the entertainment industry. Existential seriousness, an almost furious aversion to false comforts of any kind, and a vital linguistic freshness made him one of the great poetic renewers of the century. Ulven was a master of concise narrative forms and left behind only a single, short novel. His theme was the challenge of death, mortality, the brief flash of the human individual in history, and the much longer life and survival of the things he describes with empathy and great interest, as if they were already fossils. He described his style as "a glowing language under cold, fireproof glass. It’s about thinking and screaming at the same time.".