I come from a working-class family. They're the people I know and the people I love, I guess. I do not write about them for political reasons, but because, as I see it, most interesting things - social, political, emotional - take place there. It's a bottomless well for an author like me.
If you're a Norwegian writer, you are not visible in the world. The door of the English language is very hard to open for a Norwegian writer.
I'm a family-based person, even though we didn't exactly have a very happy family. I was never in any doubt that this was a centre of writing.
'In the Wake' was a very bleak book. This relationship was not too good, the father and son. This time around, I wanted a father and a son who really loved each other, which would be visible on the first page and would still be there on the last page.
To tell you the truth, I don't edit much at all. Most times, when I have finished the first draft, that's the book. Of course, I work on the page I am on until I am happy with it. I might even say that I try to state the landscape.
I was born in 1952, so obviously the sixties were important. That's when I came of age. It was also a revolutionary period, a complete break with the generation before us in terms of culture, literature, music, and in politics, of course. 1968 was an important year; I was 16, and the world became clear to me, visible, so to say.
I do consider myself a Norwegian writer, or a Scandinavian writer, as my family tree reaches into both Denmark and Sweden. I don't think about it, of course, when I am writing.
I decided if I couldn't be a writer, my life would be miserable. I had this imaginary room of references to all the books I had read, a kind of bubble, in which I lived.
At first I wanted to go to university, but I really didn't dare to. I was too self-conscious, being a working-class kid. It was really difficult. I was going to study history, but the professor asked me some questions I didn't understand, and I didn't dare to ask what they meant. I left university and went to work in the Post.
I grew up in the city. Both my mother and father were factory workers, and I loved the life in the 'metro.' Everybody saw me as a very urban guy. And I was.
I rely heavily on rhythm when I write. You should tap your foot when you read it, all the way through.
I admire American literature, both contemporary and classic - 'Moby-Dick' is just about the best book in the world - and I admire British literature for its insistence on dealing with social class. It may have been an influence.
Philosophically I am, or at least have been, a follower of Sartre. I am very interested in the choices we make, or don't make, in life-defining matters. That moment of 'angst' and its consequences can be such a cruel thing.
There is always this quarrel about what is preferable: the straight, naturalistic, epic storytelling or the modernistic, disjointed, slightly hermetic one. To me it does not matter, as long as it's good. I like both kinds. Although the common reader seems to prefer the first, which is to be expected, and who would blame her?
To say that a family is happy I think is to diminish it, taking out what is interesting. Growing up, I don't think my family was any happier or unhappier than anyone else's. My mother and father should have been divorced or never even married. On the other hand, I remember many moments of happiness.
When you are a sentence-based writer, they have to be good. They have to be really on the spot. Because when you don't have a plot, really, what shall you rely on? Just language. And sometimes I am so afraid of writing the wrong thing, I just sit and wait for the right thing to come.