Dag Solstad, a Norwegian author whose books have been translated into 20 languages, has died. Harvill Secker shared news of his passing on Monday (Mar. 17).
“We are saddened to hear of the death of our author Dag Solstad,” the publishing company told its Instagram followers. “One of Norway’s most celebrated writers, and the only author to have won the Norwegian Critics Prize three times, his legacy endures in his inimitable writing. Our thoughts are with his family.”
Dag Solstad published 30 books during his career as a writer. Armand V is one of his more recent books. In the story, Armand is a diplomat who rises through the ranks of the Norwegian government and finds his disdain for Western intervention in Middle East affairs is stronger than he imagined.
Solstad discussed the writing process as well as the notion of authors bringing politics into their stories during an interview with The White Review. “An author does not have any political obligation to express themselves, as little as a plumber, a miner, a businessman or a professor has,” the author shared.
“In a democratic society, it’s a strength that as many as possible of these contribute, when they are in need of doing so,” Solstad told the press. “Of course with the possible exception of the businessman, as in our society, he does after all have so much money so that he can buy himself whatever he wants.”
When asked about his writing process, Sostad compared the craft to that of combining libraries. “It’s about myself and all my libraries,” he shared. “I have three libraries, one here in Oslo, one in our summer house by the coast, and one in Berlin, where we rented a small apartment, now discontinued, and the books have been moved back home. I merge these libraries into one, and place myself in the library, and look around,” Solstad said.
“I stand up and pull out book after book, writing down the author and title of each book. Walking from row to row of books and taking notes. To reach the ones on top I must stand on a stepladder, to reach the ones on the bottom I must crawl on all fours. In this manner, I move from wall to wall. The novel consists of an enumeration of all these titles, from the thousands of books in my library, and ‘I’ in the middle of it all. In the end, ‘I’ say a sentence, an outburst, ‘What a rich life!’ In this way, I finally get to write an optimistic book.”
Photo: Dan P. Neegaard/Aftenposten