The latest addition to my website is Cora Sandel‘s Alberte og Jakob (Alberta and Jacob). This is a semi-autobiographical novel, the first in a trilogy, set in a small town, based on Tromsø. Alberta is a young woman who has left school and now has nothing to look forward to but marriage and a family. … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Jan Kjaerstad‘s Forføreren (The Seducer). This novel is about Jonas Wergeland, a TV documentary producer, who charms everybody (hence the title) though women adore his magic penis. At the start of the novel he arrives home from Seville to find his wife has been murdered. We jump backward … Read more
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 … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Axel Jensen‘s Ikaros – ung mann i Sahara (Icarus – A Young Man in Sahara). Our unnamed narrator, a young Norwegian, heads for Algeria but finds Algiers too noisy so goes off to the remote town of Tamanrasset, where the sensible doctor tells him everything is going to … Read more
Latest on my website: Jens Bjørneboe‘s Frihetens øyeblikk (Moment of Freedom) This is a thoroughly grim account by a forty-six year old Norwegian, living in a remote Alpine part of Germany called Heiligenberg, who cannot remember his own name. He works in a menial position for a court and is writing a History of Bestiality … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Lars Saabye Christensen‘s . The novel tells the stories of four Norwegian boys/young men from 1965 (when they are fourteen) to 1972. Initially, they are fairly conventional – they like pop music (and, obviously, the Beatles in particular, each one adopting the name of one of the Fab … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Johan Bojer‘s Den store hunger (The Great Hunger). Bojer write about the poor and downtrodden. This book is about Peer Holm, the illegitimate son (as was Bojer himself) of a well-to-do army officer). He was farmed out to poor foster-parents in the Lofoten Islands, where the main activity … Read more
Every year around this time, I read only books from one country. As we are hoping to visit Norway for the first time later this year, I have selected this country. Norwegian literature is too vast to give anything more than a relatively brief summary, which I shall do, focussing on authors and works available … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Fiona Snyckers‘ Lacuna. J M Coetzee‘s Booker Prize-winning novel Disgrace was controversial, particularly for the scene where Lucy Lurie is raped by three black men. The book was criticised for being racist, showing black men as violent, but also for sexism as Lucy is seen as passive, refusing … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Karen Duve‘s Regenroman (Rain). Leon Ulbricht is an unsuccessful writer when his friend Harry Klaamt gets him the job of writing a biography of Harry’s boss, Benno Pfitzner, a former boxer and current pimp and thug. With the advance, Leon, with his docile but attractive wife Martina, buys … Read more