Jo Nesbø, the rock and roll crime novel: "There are only two things worth writing about, crime and love"

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His appearance is that of a rocker.

Or a climber.

He left it with professional football when he broke the ligaments in his knee.

At 60, he climbs whenever he can and still plays with Di Derre, the Norwegian pop rock band he founded in 1992. This is how he began to write: he was supposed to tell what life was like for the group during a tour but, in Instead, on a 30-hour trip between Oslo and Sydney, he came up with the outline for a novel he would title The Bat.

A novel that marked

or the beginning of the Harry Hole saga (it already has 12 titles) and that of a phenomenon that is not counted without

: the boom of Scandinavian black literature.

If Sweden is the territory of Wallander, the mythical detective of Henning Mankell, Norway is that of Harry Hole.

Yel de Nesbø. With 45 million books sold worldwide, each new novel released in Spain ships an average of 30,000 copies.

And this year there are two: in May,

, and this week,

(both on Reservoir Books).

Nesbø wanders away from Harry Hole and Oslo to tell the story of a hitman, a lost antihero who leads him to the edge of the continent, almost to the North Pole, to the strange land of Finnmark under the arctic midnight sun.

'Sun of Blood' is almost a novel about the landscape, an extreme landscape that changes the characters.

Where does this fascination for Finnmark come from?

A Norwegian is more likely to have been to Italy than to Finnmark.

Paris or London are closer to Oslo than Finnmark.

It is a very interesting place to write, although life can be hard and there is no sun in winter.

The first time I went I was 11 years old and then it was my destiny when I did the military, which was mandatory then.

I wanted to see that part of Norway again, so I went there voluntarily [laughs] and fell in love completely.

Nothing prepares you for Finnmark.

Everything is extreme: culture, nature, climate, the solitude of the landscape ...

More than a thriller, does it address the psychological part of the characters?

It is a book about the need to escape.

It begins with the protagonist running away from the Oslo mafia.

But he also escapes from himself, it is obvious that he does not like what he sees in the mirror.

It is by fleeing as far from home as he can that he finds himself in the extreme north.

It is not just physical, it is an inner journey.

He faces everything he has left behind and he will meet a series of characters that will make him reconnect with his emotions and rediscover his capacity to love.

At its core, the book is a love story, with a romantic ending.

Yes, it's just ... I think I only write about love.

People say that I write crime novels but it is not true, I only write about love.

Aksel Sandemose [Danish writer pioneer in mixing the psychological with the police] said that there are only two things worth writing about: crime and love.

And he brings them together to denounce violence against women.

Sometimes you have an idyllic image of Nordic societies and it seems that there is no real domestic violence or that there is no violence in the streets.

In part this is the case, but it is a global problem, which affects the whole world, and which must be discussed.

It also speaks of a very conservative Christian sect.

But more than criticism he does it from an exotic perspective.

Laestadianism is a kind of Lutheran church that comes from Protestantism.

In northern Norway it is very present, many communities were created inside or outside the church. For the people who go there it is exotic: in the houses they do not have curtains despite the midnight sun, they are not allowed to watch television or things like that.

It is part of everyday life.

Either you are part of that sect or you are on the opposite side.

In recent years the crime novel has become more sophisticated with themes that go further than the purely criminal.

Since you published your first book in 97, how has the genre evolved?

It is a very broad genre and I know of my own little place that I occupy in it, of my inspirations.

There are formulas that have been repeated so many times that everything that could be written under the classic parameters of the genre has already been written.

It is something that also happens with rock music, for example.

To be creative you need to go beyond a framework and limitations and even traditions.

We continue to write with the three acts of Aristotle for thousands of years and that will not go out of style, but other directions are taken.

Writers and artists constantly reinvent genres.

Is that the strength of Scandinavian noir, reinventing the classic parameters?

In Scandinavia it has been almost accidental that the crime novel has become a kind of mirror or critic of society, exposing injustices.

That comes from the 70s, when Swedish writers created a link between politics and crime fiction.

It was something very new then and it has already become a kind of tradition.

There has always been a very strong relationship between politics and crime fiction in Scandinavia, a tradition reinforced by Henning Mankell and Stieg Larsson.

From the outside, there is something in common between the literature of Norway, Sweden or Denmark: we share the same culture, the same language ... But in my case I consider that I have one foot in Scandinavian criminal fiction and another in the American one, in the hardboil tradition of the 40s, 50s and 60s.

And the 70s?

It has already set several stories in this decade ...

I was in Finnmark in the late 70s. But beyond that, I like the feel of the 70s: the music, the movies, movies like Michael Caine's Relentless Killer ... I also wrote my version of Macbeth in the 70s. It is like a black and white image, a part of the history of Europe in which everything was in the air.

People remember the 70s as idyllic years, but the reality is that it was a time of great pollution, unemployment in many European countries and fear of nuclear war.

I like to describe the darkness of the 70s more than its bright and optimistic side.

Now are we also living in dark times?

The fear is no longer towards a nuclear war but towards a virus.

The situation in Norway is probably better compared to other countries.

Although the numbers of infections are very high.

Things have changed.

I'm not sure that people are adjusting to the new normal or that the situation is more normal.

But there is no longer that sense of panic that there was in March.

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