Jan Kjærstad (born 6 March 1953) is a Norwegian author. Kjærstad is a theology graduate from MF Norwegian School of Theology and the University of Oslo (cand. theol.). He has written a string of novels, short stories and essays and was editor of the literary magazine Vinduet ("The Window"). He has received a number of prizes, the most important being the Nordic Council Literature Prize, which he received for the perspectivist trilogy about the TV personality Jonas Wergeland (The Seducer, The Conqueror and The Discoverer).

His books have been translated to English, French, German, Danish, Swedish, and Hungarian, among others.

Axel Buchardt Jensen (12 February 1932 – 13 February 2003) was a Norwegian author. From 1957 until 2002 he published both fiction and non-fiction texts which include novels, poems, essays, a biography, manuscripts for cartoons and animated films.

Jensen was born in Trondheim. He first made his debut as a novelist in Oslo in 1955 with the novel Dyretemmerens kors (1955), but later he burned the entire storage of books.

In 1958 he and his then girlfriend, later wife, Marianne (later renamed Marianne Ihlen), lived on the Greek island of Hydra. Jensen was a close friend of the Canadian musician and poet Leonard Cohen. Jensen had a relationship with Cohen's girlfriend Lena. Marianne and Cohen lived for a couple of years on Hydra after the break between Axel Jensen and his wife. There is widespread belief that the character Lorenzo in the novel Joacim (1961) is modeled after Cohen, but Jensen also told Cohen that Lorenzo was modeled after the Swedish novelist Göran Tunström.

After some time, Jensen returned to Norway and settled in Fredrikstad. There, Noel Cobb, an English poet and student of psychology, came to interview him. Soon he became sexually involved with Lena. Axel then left Fredrikstad and went to live in London.