Hello! The big literary news from us at news this weekend is the unveiling of the winner of the Lytternes novel prize. It will be announced on P2 and on news.no on Saturday at 2pm, and I’m excited to see who wins! Elsewhere in the letter: I have been moved by my meeting with a Russian literary giant. I pay tribute to tram poetry, encourage you to cheat on your crime hero and give you the word of the week and the quote of the week. Do you have the coffee ready? ☕️ When people speculate about who might win the Nobel Prize in Literature, Russian Lyudmila Ulitskaya is high on the list of possible candidates. This month, “The big green tent” was published in Norwegian. It is one of her most important novels, and received rave reviews. It quickly climbed into third place on the booksellers’ top ten list. Ulitskaja seems tired when we get an audience one afternoon at Kaffistova, no wonder. She comes straight from the Barents leprosy festival, the flight from Kirkenes was delayed, and the lady is, after all, 80 years old. Just before the outbreak of the war, her son, who lives in the United States, called and said that she and her husband had to flee the country. He feared that Russia would shut down and that they would not see each other again. In March last year, Ulitskaya and her husband moved to Berlin, where many Russian intellectuals are gradually gathering who do not dare or want to live under Putin’s rule. Perhaps I am interpreting too much into Ulitskaja’s sad face. But I also think that it must be terribly sad to have to leave one’s country, aged 79, to live – and perhaps die – in a foreign country, cut off from one’s language and people. True Muscovite that she is, Lyudmila has lived through the Soviet era, from Stalin to the long cold war under Khrushchev and Brezhnev. Then came Gorbachev with his perestroika and glasnost, and an abrupt upheaval to capitalism, before Putin’s rise to power in 1999 to the present day, with growing nationalism and Soviet nostalgia. Ulitskaja writes about her own upbringing and about her own friends and acquaintances Photo: Cappelen Damm In the novel “The big green tent” she depicts the lives of three dissidents: A lover of literature, a musician and an artist. The book opens on the day of Stalin’s death in March 1953 and extends to the mid-nineties. Although the book was published 11 years ago in Russian, it almost seems more relevant now. Ulitskaja depicts surveillance and reporting culture in the Soviet state. The big “villains” in the book are the KGB, and we all know where Putin stepped on his children’s shoes. Originally a biologist, Ljudmila Ulitskaja made her debut at the age of 49 with a short novel. The celebrated author says that her books have never been censored, with the exception of a swear word the editor deleted once. When the war broke out, Ulitskaya wrote an article in Novaya Gazeta entitled “Pain, Fear, Shame” in which she condemned the attack on Ukraine. The text has been removed due to Russian censorship laws, but can be read on Dagbladet. Russian writers are known for speaking willingly and grandly about social affairs. But when I ask Ulitskaja about political matters, the interview almost grinds to a halt. Although Ulitskaja has visited both the USA, Italy and Germany, she only speaks Russian and we communicate through an interpreter. Photo: Javier Auris / news Why does she barely and vaguely answer questions about her own exile and thoughts about Putin? Is she tired of having to talk about war and politics instead of literature? Will she avoid complaining about her own situation when she knows that people are being killed on the battlefield? Or is she afraid that critical statements in foreign media could affect friends and family who still live in Russia? Ulitskaya has not been defined as a “foreign agent”, as some other Russian authors and writers are. But her books have supposedly been removed from the bookshops’ display windows. They can still be bought, but are then delivered in a plastic bag. The author thinks that is just an advantage, she says and smiles slyly. Being frowned upon by the authorities is a selling point in certain Russian circles. In the evening, Ulitskaja was to have a book bath at her publisher. I arrived early, but it was already packed. Wow, I didn’t know Norwegians were THAT interested in Russian literature. Then I heard the sound of the audience: Everywhere there was excited chatter in Russian. People flocked and pryed in chairs in places that were clearly in breach of the fire regulations. Now I got to experience Ulitskaja’s high status in her home country. On stage, the author lit up when she got to talk about the novel and her visit to Kirkenes. (“There are so few people there, you get a good look at the faces of everyone you meet. Very nice.”) Photo: Lina Hindrum / Cappelen Damm She received questions from the audience, including this big one: Why do you think so many Russians support Putin? – Stalin’s dream was to create the Soviet man: A type of people who think collectively and who do not express their own opinion, neither for nor against. It is dangerous, she pointed out: – Society is extremely passive and ready to accept all decisions that come from above. And that’s how it’s always been. Now she looked really sad. – With sadness in my heart, I must say that Stalin has unfortunately succeeded. From that perspective, the future does not inspire me in particular, concluded Ulitskaja. news’s correspondent in Ukraine just wrote a story about Ukrainians returning Russian books in disgust. Them about it. We Norwegians have a lot to learn from books by Russian authors. Ljudmila Ulitskaja’s novels are still funny in all the misery Time to break up with your crime hero? The bookshops have already prepared overflowing tables with crime novels for the particularly Norwegian Easter crime rush. The selection of Norwegian and translated crime fiction is enormous. But if you look at the bestseller lists, there are a few names that keep repeating. What is special about the crime genre is that it mostly happens in series with the same investigator and the same environment. It is an obvious advantage for readers who want to quickly take some good reading material with them. But it also becomes a resting cushion, which means that people hold out for too long with series that have been lost, I think. An example is Lars Kepler. I devoured the first book, “The Hypnotist”, which was an intense thriller. But the Ahndoril couple, who write under the pseudonym Kepler, must have seen too many horror films together. The subsequent books became more and more grotesque and the solutions more and more sought after. I gave up after book three. Likewise with the Millenium series: Lisbeth Salander was a breath of fresh air for a heroine, but the formula began to repeat itself already while Stieg Larsson was alive and writing the books himself. Time to replace Salander, Harry Hole and Wisting with something new? Photo: Wikipedia/UIP /Stig Jarnes So my advice is: Don’t stay in a relationship with a crime hero who is idle or who has become psychopathically brutal. And even if your favorite series is still good, infidelity is legal in the crime world. I myself have just discovered Val McDermid’s series with police detective Karen Pirie, when the first season of a TV adaptation aired on news. The Scottish landscapes were striking and I enjoyed the dialect and humour. I have now listened to two audiobooks by Val McDermid and am looking forward to more good cuddling moments in my new crime relationship. Val McDermid was threatened with a lawsuit by Agatha Christie’s heirs. A promotional poster dubbed McDermid the Queen of Crime, a term that Christie’s heirs have patented in Britain. Photo: Siss Vik / selfie At the Krimfestivalen in Oslo last week, I saw several authors on stage that I had hardly heard of before, but became curious about. For example, I had not read a single one of the five nominees for the Riverton prize. I asked people at the festival what it would take for them to try a new series. Friends’ recommendations and titillating back texts were two common responses. In today’s comments section, I ask you to tip others about a crime series you like. Don’t say Nesbø, Jørn Lier Horst or Unni Lindell! 🙂 Word of the week I have learned a new word from one of the nominees for the Lytternes novel prize. In Lars Elling’s “Princes from Finntjern”, we meet two old brothers who share a house and a plot of land, a so-called generational home. The problem is that no one in the two families talks to each other. The conflict is old, but no one wants to talk about its root cause, or try to resolve it. What is the name of the house they live in then? Scrape the whole picture It’s really just a little play on words on Lars Elling’s part, but based on my own experience from holidays where several generations gather in one big house, I think it was quite apt to sneak the word conflict into the middle between generation and housing. Actually, all books deserve a reading circle. At the time of writing, I have heard all the episodes in the Lytternes novelpris, except the finale. I am so impressed by how skilled the jury members are in presenting the books. Giving a precise account of the action is one of the most boring – and at the same time most difficult – things I know. (In fact, it was precisely action reports that journalist Silje Stavrum Norevik in Bergens Tidende was revealed to have plagiarized from other reviewers.) The jury delivered six summaries that were crystal clear and tantalizing for the reading appetite. My second reaction is how difficult it is to hit all readers with one book. What one juror finds unnerving, another finds chatty. The jury at work: fv Martine Breivik, Einride Berg, Toril Taklo Fv below: Gro Bergrabb, Jonas Bakken and Anders Huuse Kartzow Photo: Javier Auris/Siss Vik / news In this sense, the Listeners’ Novel Prize shows how subjective literary quality is. We read based on age, place of residence, class, profession and much, much more. But the jury discussion also shows that we allow ourselves to be moved by the input of others. Several of the jury members change their view of the books when they notice new qualities that the others point to. Jury member Toril Taklo presented two different ways of reading a book, which I thought was very Norwegian and nice. Quote of the week I look up at my bookshelf and feel a little guilty about all the books I’ve just plowed through like a tractor, rather than ruminating them with other wise cows. Poems on trams I saw with pleasure that Oslo Sporveier is once again investing in poems on the subway and trams. The idea is taken from London. An American(!) came up with the idea in 1986 that the boring commute could be given a lift with the help of classic and newly written poems on the tube. “Poems on the Underground” became a fact, and has lasted for 37 years. In 1995, “Dikt underveis” appeared in Oslo, which was a very popular venture that lasted until 2017. Fortunately, now the Authors’ Association and Sporveiene have had another conversation, and have started the project “Sporveisdikt”. The posters with poems reach around half a million people every single day, as long as the passengers remember to look up. First up are the four poets Brynjulf Jung Tjønn, Nils Chr. Moe-Repstad, Sarah Zahid and Geir Halnes. It was the author himself who read. From the launch of Sporveisdikt. Photo: Oslo Sporveier Here is one of the poems you can read on the tram: Free. It is written by Sarah Zahid, from the poetry collection “Bjørnholt vgs”. It received rave reviews and climbed high on the lyric charts. My little New Year’s resolution is to give my brain a little break by leaving my mobile phone in my bag on the way to and from work. The fact that I can now rest my eyes on a small poem instead and let my thoughts fly is top notch. Give your tip for a new crime series! Here you have the opportunity to seduce new readers to your favorite crime series or get good tips yourself! Just enter your preference: Realistic police crime, bloody serial killer murder, political thriller or family psychological mysteries. Perhaps you will find a new favorite series for Easter? I will contribute as best I can, and ask some crime-reading friends to give their views. Hello! Welcome to dialogue at news. Since you are logged in to other news services, you do not have to log in again here, but we need your consent to our terms of use for online dialogue
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Book letter # 11 Author Lyudmila Ulitskaja escaped from Russia – Siss Vik’s book letter
