This autobiographical novel is based on Strindberg's life in the 1870s and 1880s, and focuses on his marriage to Siri von Essen. It purports to be a vehicle for explaining to himself his role in the relationship from its ecstatic beginnings to its catastrophic conclusion. Strindberg was writing at the time of the modern women's movement and the intense Nordic debate on sexual morality, and the novel echoes on an anguished personal level the theme of the battle of the sexes. It is one of his many and varied attempts to write his own life, to use himself as raw material. The novel was written...

Life in a grand Norwegian mountain hotel is not what it used to be; Norwegians have deserted the traditions of their nati- ve land, with its invigorating ski trips and lake-fresh trout, for charter tours to `the infernal south'. Sedd's grandparents are fighting a losing battle to maintain standards at Fa vnesheim hotel, which has been in the family for generations, whilst the young Sedd observes developments with a keen eye for the absurd and a growing sense of unease that all is not well. He has his own demons too, as he tries to unearth the truth about his father, an Indian doctor who died...

One August day in 2008 the Norwegian Labour Party's most colourful MP, Arve Storefjeld, is discovered in a remote cabin in the country, together with four of his family and friends, all with their throats slit. This unprecedented crime in the peaceful backwater of Norway sends shudders through the national psyche, as the search for the perpetrators begins and people have to adjust to the terrifying thought: it can happen here too. The rapidly unfolding events are narrated from the stand- points of three observers who in different ways become drawn in to the investigation: Ine Wang, a young...