logo

Say thanks by supporting us!

Our website is made possible by displaying online advertisement to our visitors. Please consider supporting to us by disabling your ad blocker.

Processing...

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.

- Per Petterson
logo
Author:
Per Petterson
Tags:
World
Door
Language
Related Quote
Show all

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.

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.

Showcase
Show all

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.