In my last post, I’d written about Scandinavian crime fiction and how the entire body of work is outstanding in quality. And now, the bombings in Norway – unexpected, unbelievable and yet, for devotees of the Scandinavian thriller books, not so surprising. The books are all about the churn in Scandinavian society and how people are coping – particularly Norway and Sweden, since the largest number of books come from these two countries.
There is a good piece in today’s Times of India on how these books have in many ways foretellers of what was to come. It is true that as early as the 1960s, the pair of Wahloo and Sjowall wrote about the disgruntled xenophobic Swede who is not averse to violence. Neo-nazism is one of the recurring themes in these books, irrespective of the author and the time it was written. Norwegian mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik would have been perfectly at home in a book of Scandinavian crime fiction. He is the archetype of the villains that infest this genre of books hugely popular for their realistic portrayal of modern-day evil – bloodlessly brutal, neo-Nazi , anti-immigrant and misogynist to boot. Read: Breivik: Bad man from Scandinavian crime fiction?
Also read this piece in Time about The Worrying Rise of the Lone-Wolf Terrorist.