There’s something rotten in Norway too, and a book never printed, The cemetery of the sea (Marsilio, 544 pages, 21 euros), was seized by the government while still in draft form, because it contained shocking revelations about a large family of shipowners dating back to the Second World War. Secret societies, corruption and compromises would be revealed in high financial and political spheres where an illegal authoritarianism moves the levers of a secret society, which is headed by the Saga foundation linked to the powerful Falck family which operates alongside the established power with activities linked to the secret services.
«Aslak Nore is the new great voice of Scandinavian polizesco. We have not witnessed such mastery in noir writing since the time of John le Carré”, perhaps “Livres Hebdo” exaggerates, also because here we look rather at Stieg Larsson, Jo Nesbo, Camilla Lackberg, but Aslak Nore it is certainly the newest presence of «Salerno literature» which opens today and for seven days will try to ask «the right questions» to writers and the like invited to invade the city in the name of the event directed by Paolo Di Paolo and Gennaro Carillo and dedicated to Franz Kafka on the centenary of his death.
Prolusion entrusted to Diego De Silvawhich plays at home, among the protagonists also Goffredo Buccini, Walter Siti, Irvine Welsh, Roberto Esposito, Daria Bignardi, Eva Cantarella, Antonio Franchini, Mauro Covacich, Antonio Moresco, Maria Grazia Calandrone, Donatella Di Cesare, Serena Bortone, Marco Lodoli , Nadia Urbinati, Eraldo Affinati, Giancarlo De Cataldo, Barbara Alberti, Filippo Ceccarelli, Eric Chevillard, Mark ‘O Connell, Tatiana Salem Levy…
But let’s go back to the book by Nore, from Oslo, born in 1978. The large family at the center of his book is divided into two sections headed by two opposing relatives, uncle and nephew, who are competing for an inheritance. The first, Olav Falck, plots and plots in his homeland for his interests, unlike the second: Hans Falck, a doctor who has saved thousands of lives and has been working in critical areas such as Palestine, Afghanistan, Gaza, Bosnia, Iraq, Syria, Kurdistan, and he was in Lebanon in the Shatila refugee camp in September 1982 when the Christian-Phalangist militias allied with Israel entered to flush out the Palestinian militants and carried out a massacre.
How do you get to the book?
«Passing through the suicide of Vera, Olav’s elderly mother, a successful writer. An eccentric woman, when she too died she decided to shake things up: her will has disappeared and it seems that a manuscript copy of The Cemetery of the Sea is circulating somewhere. Hans’ daughter, Sasha, aided by the journalist Johnny Berg, as charming as he is mysterious, searches for her everywhere. The secrets of the dynasty must not be revealed.”
Are they compromising?
«In 1940, a Falck family coastal express was wrecked after an explosion. There was talk of a bomb dropped by an English submarine. Vera, who was on board with her husband, was miraculously saved with the baby. Her husband Thor perished. But what was that ship carrying? Why did the government seize his book before it was even published? My thriller moves between reality and fantasy around these questions.”
But why so many mysteries about the war and the Resistance in Norway?
«The Norwegians told a very simplistic story about the war: some bad apples were traitors and collaborators of the Germans, but the vast majority were heroic resistance fighters. The truth is darker. Most people, at least at the beginning of the occupation, were simply opportunists, as most people are in war. Neither good nor bad. I wanted to explore the gray areas. Former members of the Resistance set up Stay Behind as an anti-communist trench. Gladio was born in Italy. In Norway many rich people had their own cache for weapons in case of a new war.”
The American centers in the Middle East for the interrogations of alleged spies and terrorists are also real.
«The Americans had a lot of them, but the combination of reality and fiction is interesting. I have a journalistic background and I try to work as a documentarian when I do research. But even if I try to aim for the truth, I am still a noir writer and often start to lie and manipulate the facts.”
Why is Norway willing to recognize the Palestinian state?
«Among my friends close to the highest echelons of power, there is a disillusionment with Norway’s role as a neutral peace broker. The path to the Oslo Agreement is dead, at least from the Norwegian point of view. Who knows the reasons of the Palestinians, and not only for the growing influx of Arab and Muslim immigrants.”
Is Olav the bad guy and Hans the good guy?
«I think it’s more complicated. They are both ambivalent, at least for me. Olav is arrogant and brash, but also intelligent, determined, traumatized by his mother’s traumas. Hans is a hero in a way, but he sacrificed his family life. I’m interested in these contradictions.”
And Johnny Berg?
«It’s a character I’ve wanted to write since I read my first thriller at 13. When I write about Sverre, his counterpart, Olav’s son, I try to find all the pathetic sides within myself. In writing about Johnny, I look for the opposite, the heroic. But despite his flaws, I think he’s the most honest person in the book.”
