Norwegian crime writer Jo Nesbø talks to Jake Kerridge about his latest Harry Hole novel and his lifelong fascination with what makes ordinary people do evil things.
Jo Nesbo: 'I think most people
have fantasised about having their loved ones killed’ Photo:
AFP/Alamy
The Telegraph - 07 Sep 2013
There is an Edvard Munch exhibition on in Oslo and the famous tormented
figure from The Scream can be seen on every hoarding and the side of every bus
here, but there is one other face that almost matches his for ubiquity. The
crime novelist Jo Nesbø gazes at me not only from billboards but also, in
various striking poses, from the front covers of a score of commuters’
paperbacks. It is difficult to say which is the more prominent poster boy for
art that depicts the angst lying beneath the placid surface of everyday life in
Norway.
I meet Nesbø at a coffee shop in central Oslo, where we head for a discreet
corner at the back. In an earlier incarnation he was one of the most famous
musicians in Norway, as a member of the band Di Derre (or “Those Guys”), and
until a couple of years ago he sported the long hair that befits an old rocker;
now, seeking to be less conspicuous, he has it cropped military-style.
Indecently handsome at 53, he isn’t in the flesh quite the smouldering figure
seen on those book covers, but although he is softly spoken his piercing eyes
command attention.
Nesbø is a big deal in Norway. Jens Stoltenberg, the prime minister, is a fan
of his and once told Nesbø that, while making small talk during his first
meeting with the king, he had recommended Nesbø’s novel The Redbreast. “And the
king said, 'Oh really, what is it about?’ And unfortunately then he remembered
it’s about a man who wants to kill the Norwegian royal family.”
But he is hardly less feted throughout the rest of the world. He has sold
more than 20 million books, and he tells me that in a couple of days’ time he
will be having a meeting with Martin Scorsese, who is set to produce a
forthcoming film of his novel The Snowman.
It is not, he admits, normal practice in Norway for photographs of authors to
adorn the front covers of their paperbacks. Does this rock star-cum-novelist
feel that, more than most writers, he is a brand? “Yeah I am, I am. And I don’t
mind that, I realise that is what you become. But my daughter grew up with me
being a well-known man, and I remember she would say that there was a picture of
Jo Nesbø in the papers today, not Dad. And she said it 'Jo-Nesbø’, like it’s one
word. And that’s how I see it: Jo-Nesbø is the brand, and I’m the guy who is a
dad or a brother or a bandmate.”
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