Random House has a reader's guide with a short interview,
What could get you arrested?And here's a Washington Post profile with some insight into the author's literary influences and the novel's Norwegian roots,
You mean; what got me arrested? Well, dropping my pants and mooning for a passing police car when I was eighteen. A bit drunk and nothing I'm very proud of, but it gave me the chance to do some research. I know what the inside of a cell looks like.
For instance, this sentence is making a sort of class judgment about a character: "Meirik was from Tromso and spoke a strangely haphazard mixture of Tromso dialect and standard Norwegian."Finally, this BBC item suggests the reality behind one of the novel's themes.
But unless you know Norwegian geography, and know that Nynorsk and Bokmal are the two official languages of the country — and whatever one you speak says something about where you grew up — the detail would zip right past most readers.
Thanks, Martha, for posting this. This material definitely adds to the reading (I just wish I'd seen it prior to the meeting).
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