LitHouse podcast

Jamaica Kincaid is one of the greatest authors of feminist and postcolonial literature of our time. In her handful of novels and a collection of short stories, she has portrayed themes such as structural racism, otherness and mother-daughter relationships with soberness and astonishing clarity. She has emerged as a favourite among readers and critics alike, and is increasingly mentioned as a candi...

“How will you show the destroyed city?” The Trofymchuks live in a small city in Donbas’ “Red Zone”, Ukraine, which since Russia’s invasion in 2014 has seen frequent shellings and the breakdown of infratructure. They plan to make a film showing their new daily life, and at the dinner table discuss how best to capture the destruction, uncertainty and despair that the war has brought. Just as importa...

As a little girl, Lea Ypi regarded Stalin and Albania’s leader Enver Hoxha as dependable father figures, she liked how her teacher Nora har simple answers to everything, and what she wanted most of all, was to be named a pioneer. But when the communist regime falls in 1991, the young Lea suddenly realizes that nothing is truly like she thought. Has her whole life been a lie? In her memoir Free: Co...

The world in which we live is by and large designed and built for “the ideal man”: The size of cell phones, seat belts in cars, the development of medication – there are countless examples. And most of this we take for granted, that is how used we are, both women and men, to men being the norm, the universal form. If something is to change in the world that is constantly overlooking women, we have...

It is a rare occation when the author of cult books such as American Psycho and The Rules of Attraction releases his first novel in 13 years. For readers of Bret Easton Ellis ’s earlier books, The Shards has a familiar atmosphere, and he doesn’t shy away from explicit descriptions of sex or violence. We are in early 80s LA, and the main character, Bret Ellis, is 17 and a senior at the prestigious...

The young girl Hirut starts working for a wealthy couple, but is soon brought into their many quarrels, their jealousy and grief over the loss of a child. This is Ethiopia in the 1930s. Things go from bad to worse when Italy, led by Mussolini, invades the country, and Hirut’s master is tasked with organizing an opposition army. His wife refuses to wait at home for him, and creates her own force, m...

Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor is an author, screenwriter, and former head of the Zanzibar International Film Festival. In 2003, the Kenyan won the Caine Prize for African Writing, and her 2013 debut novel, Dust , won the Jomo Kenyatta Prize for Literature. In 2015, Owuor visited the House of Literature, a visit that resulted in the Norwegian publication of Dust . The critically acclaimed The Dragonfly Sea...

Nadifa Mohamed is the writer of three novels, with the two first, Black Mamba and The Orchard of Lost Souls available in Norwegian translation so far. In 2017, Mohamed participated in The House of Literature’s festival on Somali literature, A nation of poets. During the pandemic, she interviewed Arundhati Roy and Édouard Louis for the House of Literature and Linn Ullmann’s podcast How to Proceed....

Damon Galgut’s Booker Prize-winning novel  The Promise  follows the white South-African Swart family, living on a farm outside Pretoria. The story follows the nuclear family through the waning years of the apartheid state, through the 1994 liberation and until the children are grown, close to our time. Galgut’s story glides through the decades of South Africa’s recent history, weaving in...

Warsan Shire  is a critically acclaimed and award winning British poet. In 2016, the artist Beyoncé named her one of her favorite poets, and she appears both on the album «Lemonade» and in the film «Black Is King». In 2014, she was the first poet named Young Poet Laureate of London. Shire, born to Somali parents in Kenya and raised in Great Britain, has said that she draws on her own experien...

Édouard Louis 2022: In a world dominated by state narratives and information wars, what is the role of the writer? Power imbalances, exploitation and the dark history of Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe are among the recurring themes in the works of Finnish-Estonian writer and playwright  Sofi Oksanen. Her blend of surrealist elements and real-world political plotlines allow for a literary...

Édouard Louis 2022: Alan Hollinghurst  and  Édouard Louis  have long read each other’s books with great interest. While Louis has written brutally honest depictions of growing up gay in a homophobic family and environment, Hollinghurst’s fiction explores gay culture and experience through the decades, including the AIDS crisis and gay life prior to decriminalization in the UK. While...

Édouard Louis 2022: In his most recent book,  Changer : méthode , Édouard Louis shows just how indebted he is, as a writer and thinker, to the works of the French academic and author  Didier Eribon . Ever since seeing him lecture early in his life, Louis and Eribon have developed a deep understanding of the other’s works and ideas, with Eribon’s novel  Retour à Reims  even prov...

Édouard Louis 2022: A lecture by Maaza Mengiste, introduction by Édouard Louis. What is the responsibility of the writer in documenting and unpicking the violence around us? In Édouard Louis’s book  The History of Violence , he explores violence from the point of view of the victim of rape and attempted murder, but also the violence that the perpetrator has experienced from society. In the no...

Édouard Louis 2022: A young gay person escapes their small town in search of friendship and love in the big city. A recurring theme as much in real life as in literature. In his most recent book,  Change: Method , Édouard Louis delves deeper into his own journey – as told in  The End of Eddy  – from his poor upbringing and to the cultural elite in Paris, and the deliberate steps he...

Édouard Louis 2022: This lecture was held on November 18th at The House of Literature in Norway, during their three days of conversations, lectures, and events from  Édouard Louis’  writing and works. The lecture was written for this occasion and centres around Louis’ recent experience of losing his older brother. Few writers have championed the working class like Édouard Louis. In each...

In Checkout 19 Claire-Louise Bennett writes about the joy of reading, about when fiction becomes so vividly alive that you take it with you into the real world. Through a series of chapters - told in I-, she- and even we-form - we follow the main character's development from a little girl to an adult woman, through childhood, promiscuity and bad boyfriends. At the same time, there is a development...

What is life like for young and regime-critical Russians today?  Kira Yarmysh  is best known in Russia as a spokeswoman for the Russian oppositional politician Alexei Navalny. Now her debut novel  Incredible Incidents in Women's Cell No. 3  is making headlines. In Russia, the book was quickly branded as "gay propaganda" by Russian authorities, due to depictions of same-sex love...

“Ukrainians have never accepted censorship. They have always wanted to say and write what they think. That is why almost all Ukrainian writers and poets in the 1920s and 1930s were shot by Soviet authorities… If Russia succeeds, we will have a new generation of executed writers and politicians, philosophers and philologists." How should one fight for freedom of speech and facts in a war of propaga...

Does a house equal a home? This is one question Deborah Levy explores in her recent book  Real Estate , the third and final instalment in her series of "living autobiographies", autobiographies written in the storms of life, and not in quiet contemplation towards the end of it. The need for a place of one's own - whether it be a physical place or a place in one's writing – is a recurring them...

The new HBO mini series The Plot Against America is based on the Philip Roth novel (2004) by the same name. The novel tells the counterfactual story of Charles Lindberg’s presidency, based on the real man and what might happen if he, with his fascist sympathies, was elected president of the United States around 1940.The US has become increasingly racist and polarized during Donald Trump’s presiden...

Njabulo Ndebele grew up during the apartheid, and is one of South Africa's leading writers and intellectuals. He is the former vice principal at the University of Cape Town, and the author of the groundbreaking book The Cry of Winnie Mandela , in which he blends essay and novel, fact and fiction in an exploration of women’s position in the freedom struggle. Koleka Putuma was born in 1993, and belo...

Through titles such as Cooked, The Omnivore’s dilemma and In defense of Food, Michael Pollan, Professor of Journalism at UC Berkeley’ and of the Practice of Non-Fiction at Harvard University, has distinguished himself as one of the world’s foremost feature writers and authors of non-fiction. His latest book How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousnes...

Mexican poet Gloria Gervitz has been writing the same poem for over forty years. The epic poem Migrations ( Migraciones ) is one of the greatest poetic projects of our time – a poem in constant movement through family, religion, death and sexuality, but also through perpetual newly published versions. It is based on the history of Gervitz’s own Jewish family that fled persecution in Eastern Europe...

Is the assertion that freedom of expression is under pressure just a myth used to cover up more important political incompatibilities?   In this event with the british-Sudanese author and Guardian columnist Nesrine Malik, held at the House of Literature 22.january 2020, Malik opened Litteraturhuset’s Commission on the Freedom of Expression. In her lecture, she talked about freedom of expression. H...