Bjarte Breiteig: The Story of a Neigbourhood
– Norway
"My writing proces is very slow and I often rewrite my texts many times before reaching the final form," declared this Norwegian prose writer (born in 1974) and admirer of Franz Kafka. This was, in fact, the reason why he initially started with short story writing. His debut collection Fantomsmerter (Phantom Pains) was also published in Czech. At the time, he stated that when he attempts to write a novel, he ends up with fifty diferent beginnings. However, he eventually managed to venture into this literary form as well. His frist novel is titled Mine fem år som far (Five Years of Fatherhood) and Czech readers are already familiar with it. Breiteig begin to work on this novel, when o paternity leave, just like the main chracter – a pleasant man in his forties, a devoted father of two boys and an aspiring short story writer – who sexually abuses a four-year-old daughter of a family friend. However, this is not the central plot, as the reader becomes aware of his guilt right at the beginning of the book. In his most recent novel Tøyeneffekten (The Tøyen Effect), which was published two years ago, he takes the readers into the immigrant neighborhood of Tøyen in Oslo, where he himself lives with his family.