Sigurd Hoel: Møte ved Milepelen (Meeting at the Milestone)

The latest addition to my website is Sigurd Hoel‘s Møte ved Milepelen (Meeting at the Milestone). Published only two years after World War II, this book had considerable impact in Norway, as it deals with the issue of Norwegian collaboration with the Nazis. Our unnamed narrator has provided a safe house for the Resistance and learns from one man he is sheltering that a man he had known as a student is now living in a rural village and is unhappy in his life but has joined the Nazi party. Our narrator will later examine why several people he knew had become collaborators with the Nazis but he is also sent to the village to find out why the Nazis seem to know what the Resistance is up to. Is there a spy? If so, who and why? He gets involved with various people from his past but, at the same time, ends up not really knowing why these people collaborated and, as he says, not finding the pattern in my own life. The book deservedly had considerable success both in Norway and abroad when published.

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