LitHouse podcast The House of Literature in Oslo - Litteraturhuset

Writer and therapist Glenn Bech sparked a larger debate about class issues in Denmark with his autobiographical novel The Fathership (forthcoming in Hazel Evans’ translation) and his manifesto Jeg anerkænder ikke længere jeres autoritet (“I no longer recognize your authority”).
The novel The Fathership depicts a brutal childhood characterized by violence, betrayals and toxic masculinity, but that also has a tenderness and love for the families and working class community portrayed. The novel was praised by the literary establishment, and the following year, Bech published Jeg anerkænder ikke længere jeres autoritet (“I no longer recognize your authority”), a furious manifesto about class struggle, the proletariat and the elite. In a self-scrutinizing, loud and emphatic prose, Bech rails against class contempt and the economic blind spots within the cultural middle class, showing the reader what it is like to be exposed, gay and poor.
Masculinity, homophobia and class are central issues in British poet and author Andrew McMillan’s critically acclaimed debut novel Pity. The book portrays three generations of men, spanning from the heyday of the coal industry, with long days of back-breaking labour in the mines, to a present characterized by unemployment and loneliness. In a sparse but urgent tone and with an eye for the raw and vulnerable, McMillan explores today’s gender roles for men, and how the past affects the present. At the same time, the book is a tribute to the working class and an invitation to reflection, change and acceptance.
McMillan and Bech are joined by writer and journalist Kristofer Folkhammar for a conversation about poverty, class and toxic gender roles.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

History is written by the victorious. But do we not also need to hear the story from the other side, from ordinary people caught in the middle of historical upheavals, forced to pick a side, or just try to survive? To those relegated to the footnotes in the history books, or not mentioned at all.
This can be said to be the starting point for the novels of Sudanese-Scottish Leila Aboulela and Ethiopian-American Maaza Mengiste, both writing about historical events in their home countries.
The backdrop in Aboulela’s new novel River Spirit is the dramatic time in the Sudan’s history in the late 19th century. In the span of just a few years, the country underwent several occupations, as well as a bloody revolution led by a man claiming to be al-Mahdi (the Islamic Messiah). Through a multitude of voices from different sides of the conflicts, and with the young orphaned girl Akuany as a turning point, Aboulela leads us through a central historical time in the Sudan.
A young, poor woman is also central in Maaza Mengiste’s The Shadow King, telling the story of 1935 Ethiopia invaded by Mussolini’s Italy. Told from as different perspectives as Ethiopia’s emperor Haile Selassie, the Italian soldier Ettore and the servant girl Hirut, the novel offers a complex picture of the events. Mengiste has emphasized that she was particularly interested in exploring women’s role in the resistance movement.
Mengiste was born in Ethiopia, and is currently living in the United States. She has explored Ethiopia’s recent history in both her critically acclaimed novels Beneath the Lion’s Gaze and The Shadow King, with the latter shortlisted for the prestigious Booker Prize. Mengiste has also made her mark as a photographer and an essayist.
Aboulela was born in the Sudan, today she lives in Scottland. She has published a number of award winning novels, short story collections and plays. River Spirit is the first novel in a planned series exploring Scotland’s role in the British colonization of the Sudan.
At the House of Literature, Aboulela and Mengiste meet writer and creative director of the Radical Books Collective, Bhakti Shringarpure, for a conversation about writing historical fiction, and about foregrounding the stories of women and ordinary people within big historical events.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The year is 1949, and the state of Israel is in its infancy. In the Negev desert, bordering Egypt, Israeli armed forces have set up camp with the mission to “cleanse it of any remaining Arabs” after the war the preceding year. They happen upon a Beduin family, a teenage girl among them, whom the soldiers rape, kill and bury in the desert.
In present-day Ramallah, a young woman discovers these events through a small newspaper story. It catches her attention because the events took place exactly 25 years before the day she was born. The woman becomes compelled to find out what actually happened in that desert, and embarks upon a highly dangerous journey to come to the bottom of the story.
Adania Shibli is a critically acclaimed Palestinian writer, and holds a PhD in media and cultural studies. She has published three novels in Arabic, and Minor Detail is the first to be translated into Norwegian. While slim in size, the novel contains far more than the modest number of pages would suggest. Shibli explores themes such as belonging and loss, depicting the everyday absurdities under a normalized occupation. Shibli’s language is precise and sparse, the story concise. The many gaps in the story creates a tension, quivering beneath the surface and increasing by each page.
The novel was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize in 2021, and in 2023, it won the prestigious German LiBeraturpreis. However, they chose to postpone the award ceremony indefinitely after Hamas’s terror attack on October 7th and Israel’s following war on Gaza, a decision met with extensive criticism internationally.
At the House of Literature, Shibli will meet writer colleague Maaza Mengiste for a conversation about language, the past, borders and all the minor details that make up our reality.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Freedom of expression is never absolute, but subject to laws and social conventions. Threats to freedom of thought and speech can come directly from authoritarian states or religious institutions. But they can also be self-inflicted, in the form of self-censorship. Both forms of censorship exist in democracies as well as dictatorship, and often overlap.
Throughout history, authors in particular have been made the object of the limitations set by powerful institutions, be it by explicit decree or through the trepidations felt at writing challenging or shocking literature.
Few know this landscape better than historian, author and critic Ian Buruma. He has written a host of books on East Asian (especially Chinese and Japanese) culture and history, the West and Islam, and European history, including this year’s The Collaborators. Buruma is also highly respected columnist and critic for The New Yorker and The New York Review of Books, the latter of which he also served as editor-in-chief.
This evening, Buruma will give an introductory lecture on how censorship has shaped culture and the arts in both Eastern and Western countries, before being interviewed by author and professor of cultural history at the University of Oslo, Helge Jordheim. He will join Buruma on stage for a conversation on how threats to expression have changed over time, and the challenges that writers face today.
This event marks the beginning of The House of Literature’s series on “Forbidden books”, which sheds light on the ways in which literature is made forbidden, censored, or otherwise suppressed, historically and today.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The year is 1995, and 16 year old Shy is sneaking out of the rural boarding school for “difficult” boys, named “Last Chance”. A long history of petty crime, expulsions and frustrated family members has brought him here, but now it is all soon over. With a spliff in his pocket and his Walkman loaded with his drum ‘n’ bass favourites, he’s ready. His rucksack is filled with rocks, and his head is swimming with memories of all his failures and times he fucked it up.
Shy is a compositionally ambitious and lyrical character study with troubled youth as its subject. Through frequent flashbacks and interjections, Shy provides us with glimpses of a difficult childhood leading to a young man at the verge of self-annihilation. Shy is a tender story of depression and not being able to fit in, told with great compassion and nuance. At the same time, the novel is a fervent ode to the outsiders of the 90s and to the culture and music that embraced them, those who no one else wanted.
Max Porter is a British author and editor at the publishing house Granta. With his experimental and innovative novels, in particular Grief Is the Thing with Feathers, he has established himself as one of his generation’s most exciting voices and acquired a large readership among critics and with the general public. Even other writers like Douglas Stuart, PJ Harvey and George Saunders have expressed their admiration for Porter and his trilogy of novels on boyhood, which Shy now completes.
Another writer who has followed Porter’s career with curiosity and excitement is Norwegian author and editor at Tiden, Mattis Øybø. He will meet Porter for a conversation on Shy, masculinity and how best to bring the outsiders back in.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Do you understand why I’ve decided to tell you about our family? If our stories survive, we will not die, even when our bodies are no longer here on this earth.
The Vietnam war was a watershed event in the Cold War as well as in the West’s understanding of itself. But what does the story look like from a Vietnamese perspective?
In Vietnam, the war is still a traumatic experience. This is what writer Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai explores in her novel The Mountains Sing, in which we alternately follow the girl Huong and her grandmother Diệu Lan.
While the rest of the family has been scattered across the country, Huong and Diệu Lan tries to make it through the days with the help of stories. Huong disappears into books like Pinocchio and Treasure Island, or listens to her grandmother sharing her life story, where Nguyễn takes us through the history of Vietnam in the last hundred years, from a colony under Japan and the brutal reforms of the communist regime in the 1950s and through the horrific years of the Vietnam war. Is reconciliation at all possible after decades of abuse and with families torn apart?
Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai has published a number of poetry collections in Vietnamese, and in The Mountains Sing, her first novel in English, this background from poetry is clearly visible. She balances the dark story with a vivid and lyrical language, and through the novel’s chorus of voices, she challenges the black and white picture we know from history books and Hollywood movies. The novel has been met with critical acclaim, and won her the International Book Award and the PEN Oakland/ Josephine Miles Literary Award.
When Nguyễn visited the House of Literature, she was joined by translator and artistic advisor for the Norwegian Festival of Literature, Yukiko Duke, for a conversation about memories, reconciliation and Vietnam’s bloody history.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.