The novel turns to Norway, and the lingering, buried stench left by the German occupation during the second world war
to his childhood home on one of Norway’s many little islands. It is a Scandinavian April: “strands of mist cling to the ground, enveloping the two sentry boxes at the bridge head and what remains of the iron post for the old barrier across the road.” The opening page of Steve Sem-Sandberg’s new novel hints at what is to come—personal and political history shrouded by the fog of time and an unwillingness to confront the sins of the past.
Andreas’s homecoming is prompted by the death of his guardian, Johannes. At first, this seems a conventional story, as Andreas recounts his arrival from the mainland to see how things stand at the Yellow Villa, where he and his sister, Minna, grew up. But soon the reader learns of the mysterious and frightening circumstances in which they came to be in Johannes’s care.
Johannes, like everyone else on the island, lived in the shadow of its owner, Jan-Heinz Kaufmann. A botanist who pressed a copy of his leaflet, “On the Nutritional Requirements of Nature and of Mankind”, onto all his employees, Kaufmann had been a minister in Quisling’s government. As Andreas digs into the past, the questions only become more puzzling.
This is a gripping, disturbing book. Mr Sem-Sandberg’s realistic narrative morphs into something stranger. Events occur out of chronological order, the narrator and other islanders slide casually into violence, information is repeated as if Andreas has forgotten what he has said, his memory overcome by the island mist. Throughout the reader wonders at the parallels with Shakespeare’s play of the same name; the correlations of plot and character are cleverly slippery.
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