Brand is the drama of absolute intransigence in support of the religious life as opposed to the hedonistic one. The motto of Brand, the main character, is “All or nothing”. He is a strong person, a very stubborn Norwegian, and he does not admit compromises nor expedients, but goes directly to his goal, over-riding affections, memories and traditions. The conventional God is a God too spineless for Brand, a God weak and antiquated, a God who contents himself with fragments of human hearts, and who finds it sufficient that man, fortified by the Christian doctrine of redemption, offers Him homage every seven days.

Upon this petty and what he views as a vulgar concepcion of religion, the young Norwegian pastor declares war to the death. Better, according to Brand, to live in utter impiety, better to live like a libertine than to accommodate oneself to the practice of such a false and lying life. “Either everything or nothing.”

Thus Henrik Ibsen lets Brand struggle with and live out the dilemmas laid out by the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard in Either/Or (see Either/Or: A Fragment of Life (Penguin Classics)). And to some extent Brand may be viewed as Ibsen’s reply to, and partly also refutation of, Kierkegaard.

If there is a God, one should dedicate oneself to him completely, without dissimulation and without defections. In conformance to this ambitious ideal of his, Brand refuses to leave his parish although the climate threatens the life of his wife and child and later they die; and he also denies the sacrament to his aged dying mother, because she will not consent to give away all her riches. Contrary to Zarathustra, who from the mountain descends into the valley to be among men, Brand painfully climbs to the summit in order to be nearer to his God. But an avanche descends upon him. Dying Brand asks of the Eternal if the littlie grain of human will has any weight in the scale of redemption.

In the midst of the crash of the avalanche the answer comes to him: “God is love!” With such an answer the tragic Norwegian arrives at a more humane and generous conclusion than the philosopher Kierkegaard, whose life has some points of similarity with that of the cleric Brand. This is a wonderful play and a great, thought-provoking reading.

See also our Henrik Ibsen pages at ScandinavianBooks.com!

See also: George Bernard Shaw’s The Quintessence of Ibsenism (Dover Books on Literature and Drama), James McFarlane’s The Cambridge Companion to Ibsen (Cambridge Companions to Literature), and Toril Moi’s excellent Henrik Ibsen and the Birth of Modernism: Art, Theater, Philosophy.

The Fourth Man, actually the fifth novel about inspectors Gunnarstranda and Frolich (Frølich) by K O Dahl, is in some ways more similar to American crime novels than for instance those by Scandinavian authors like Karin Fossum, Karin Alvtegen, Jo Nesbo, Ake Edwardson or Henning Mankell. It is a hard-boiled noir style novel with a lean style, and reminds me more of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. There is, however, considerable psychological depth.

In the course of a routine police raid, Detective Inspector Frank Frolich of the Oslo Police saves the life of Elizabeth Faremo. She is a dark-haired beauty with mysterious eyes who was inadvertently caught in the crossfire. This is where The Fourth Man starts. Some weeks later, Frolich coincidentally runs into her again. He is attracted to her and they start an affair, even though his colleagues warn him about it.

By the time Frolich learns that Elisabeth is the sister of a known local gang-member, Johnny Faremo, it is already too late. And then Johnny is implicated in a crime, a security guard is attacked and killed. But Elisabeth gives her brother and his gang an alibi and Frolich’s name is mentioned. Then Elisabeth disappears. Now Frolich is plunged into both an emotional tempest as well as a complex investigation. He is forced to rethink their relationship. Were things as they seemed?

Frolich is asked to take some time off. And his boss Gunnarstranda is upset and believes Frank has been played from the very beginning. And as the body count increases, Frolich begins his own unofficial investigation.

Complex, dark and tragic, The Fourth Man is a tale of revenge and erotic obsession, where love lures a good cop to walk on the wild side. This is classical crime noir in a modern setting. It has it all: cynical strippers, tough-talking gangsters, corrupt businessmen, mixed identities and a bona fide femme fatale. Dahl’s language is, as one critic put it “spiced with small poetic observations … of remarkably high quality.” The author himself says that this is his project, to “combine the genre literature with a little poetry and literary storytelling.” The Fourth Man proves that Dahl is able to do this.

Order from amazon UK: The Fourth Man and The Man in the Window.

The Demon of Dakar is the third book by Kjell Eriksson about Detective Ann Lindell of the Uppsala police. The first was The Princess of Burundi, and the second Cruel Stars of the Night.

The life of Manuel Alavez, a Mexican peasant, has changed for the worse. One of his brothers have died, the other is imprisoned in Sweden for drug smuggling. Both were set up by a stranger. The Zapotek indians of Mexico, Manuel’s tribe, call such men bhni guí’a. They tempt people with riches and a good life, but in return take their souls.

Manuel decides to go to Sweden. He learns that the demon is the unpleasant owner of two restaurants in Uppsala who with his partner has set up a smuggling operation to finance his restaurant empire. His name is Slobodan Andersson.

One day Ann Lindell shows up in the restaurant. Slobodan’s partner, Armas,has been killed, and has been found with his throat sliced. All clues lead straight back to the popular restaurant Dakar, owned by Slobodan Andersson. has some shady connections in his past, and his partner’s reputation is equally murky.

The murder of Armas seems to have started a wild chain of violent and dramatic events, centered around restaurant Dakar. A large number of people are suspicious. The meat chef is an oddball, to say the least. The newest hire’s personal life is a tangled web of lies. Even Eva Willman, the seemingly blameless older woman returning to the workforce as a waitress, has skeletons in her closet. Ann Lindell feels she is chasing some shadow on a revenge mission that is likely to hit again.

The Demon of Dakar is a wonderful police procedural. If Ann Lindell is to prevent a bloodbath, she must match wits with and out-maneuver an invisible killer whose motives are seemingly completely obscure.

But the reader knows the killer well. To the killer, the crimes are justified. Actually, he’s a very likable fellow who is only looking for justice.

In The Demon of Dakar, as in all of Kjell Eriksson’s compelling spellbinders, though, justice entails a frantic race to the finish, a race without rules and fraught with danger.

The White Lioness may well be the best Henning Mankell ever, at least as far as his Wallander series is concerned. I just read his Italian Shoes, which has not yet been translated, and currently think that’s his best.

The are many ingredients to the plot in The White Lioness. First, a happily married woman disappears in southern Sweden while going about her business as an estate agent. There is no explanation and no motive. Inspector Kurt Wallander and his team are called in to investigate this case of a missing person.

As readers, we know right from the beginning what is going on: she was at the wrong time at the wrong place. However, Wallander does not know this. Inspector Wallander has a gut feeling that the victim will never be found alive, but he has no idea how far he will have to go in a search of the killer and the origin of the crime.

The case turns out to be much more complicated that it appeared to be. The search for the truth behind the killing eventually uncovers an assassination plot, and Wallander finds himself in a tangle with both the secret police and a ruthless foreign agent.

It turns out that it all started in South Africa. A pro-apartheid conspirator has sent a gaunt, steel-eyed former KGB assassin and a black hit man to Sweden to train for a unnamed killing. When their hideout is destroyed in a fireball and the remains found in the ashes - a precision firearm, a sophisticated, high-powered radio, and a severed human thumb - the clues lead Wallander back to South Africa.

Combining compelling insights into the sinister side of modern life with a riveting tale of international intrigue, The White Lioness keeps you on the knife-edge of suspense. Some may find the book a little long-winded in the passages about South-African politics, but it is a wonderful book even so!

The White Lioness has been filmed as well. You can order the DVD from amazon (US): The White Lioness.

Or, order from amazon UK: The White Lioness (book) or White Lioness [2000] (REGION 1) (NTSC).

In a sleepy little village at the foot of a Norwegian mountain, a child — 6 year old Ragnhild — goes missing. It is a village where the children run in and out of one another’s houses and play unafraid in the streets. Yet the search for her reveals the naked body of a well-liked local schoolgirl. Why would anyone want to murder Annie Holland? The investigation is in the hands of Inspector Konrad Sejer and his young colleague Jacob Skarre.

Karin Fossum is my favorite Norwegian crime writer. Karin Fossum was born November 6, 1954 in Sandefjord. Fossum now lives in Oslo. Karin Fossum’s Inspector Sejer novels are masterfully constructed, psychologically convincing, and compulsively readable.

This is a wonderful book with great characters, and it is very carefully written. The dialogue is realistic. It is also a book that gives a strong sense of community and that makes you feel and know that, yeah, this is how is could really have happened. The book is highly recommended to anyone who likes police-procedural novels.

And, so that you know that this really is a quality book, I should mention that Don’t Look Back! received The Riverton Prize and The Glass Key (for the best Nordic detective novel).

Read an excerpt of the book at the Hardcourt publishers’ site. We have more reviews of Karin Fossum’s books at ScandinavianBooks!

Aftenposten’s reviewer said the book “has hit the bull’s eye. It has scored a direct hit and is an exceptional top score! This is a dazzling writing in the crime genre”.

“Don’t Look Back! shows just how well Fossum deserves her continental fame.” — Sunday Times

The Fire Engine That Disappeared, originally published in 1969, is one of the books in the marvelous series about Swedish detective Martin Beck and his colleagues, written by Maj Sjowall (Sjöwall) and Per Wahloo (Wahlöö). According to Wahlöö, their intention was to “use the crime novel as a scalpel cutting open the belly of the ideological pauperized and morally debatable so-called welfare state of the bourgeois type.” How well they succeeded as far as the social criticism of the Swedish welfare state is concerned, is open to debate. However, what they did succeed in, was the creation of one of the most interesting and wonderful series of crime novels ever.

In The Fire Engine That Disappeared, detective Gunnvald Larsson and a street cop are on a stake-out when the house they are watching turns into a blaze of flames. While Larsson tries to rescue the survivors, the other cop runs to a phone booth to call in the fire brigade.

As Melander, another of Beck’s colorful colleagues, finds out through painstaking research, one of the inhabitants had committed suicide by closing off all holes in his room, and then filling it with gas. But even when the case is closed, there are a few doubts nagging at the backs of the heads of Martin Beck and Gunnvald Larsson. What caused the gas to explode? Where did the fire engine go that was originally called in?

All attention is focused on finding a possible suspect. Then the suspect is found dead in a car. Further investigation shows that the man was already dead when the house was blown up. The Fire Engine that Disappeared is a top police procedural. It is a wonderful read. However, reading the whole series in sequence is strongly recommended!

In our opinion, Sjowall & Wahloo’s series about Marin Besk is one of the top five series of crime books ever written. Some firmly place it in the number one spot. The stories are great, it works as a series, it is excellently written, the plots are rich and well executed, and the books are both interesting, engaging and funny as well. Great reads. How much more do you want? You can read more about the series at our site!

Order The Fire Engine That Disappeared (Martin Beck) from Amazon UK!