Tynset takes place during a sleepless night, but as the work unfolds
it becomes apparent that the circumstances of the immediate present
serve merely as points of departure. Plagued by incessant rumination,
the narrator's restless mind spins thread after thread of thought,
fantasy, and memory into an elaborate tapestry spanning centuries and
covering thousands of miles--all without the narrator ever leaving his
house. Hildesheimer famously refused to describe Tynset as a novel;
instead, he chose to think of the work as an extended monologue whose
structure derives from the musical rondo form, with the recurrence of
the titular Norwegian town functioning as a refrain.