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2012 Longlist

The Snowman

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ABOUT
THE BOOK

Beware the falling snow… The first snowfall in Oslo brings a series of gruesome murders, and Harry Hole is pitted against a brutal killer who will drive him to the edge. The night the first snow falls a young boy wakes to find his mother gone. He walks through the silent house, but finds only wet footprints on the stairs. In the garden looms a solitary figure: a snowman bathed in cold moonlight, its black eyes glaring up at the bedroom windows. Round its neck is his mother’s pink scarf. Inspector Harry Hole is convinced there is a link between the disappearance and a menacing letter he received some months earlier. As Harry and his team delve into unsolved case files, they discover that an alarming number of wives and mothers have gone missing over the years. When a second woman disappears Harry’s suspicions are confirmed: he is a pawn in a deadly game. For the first time in his career Harry finds himself confronted with a serial killer operating on his turf, a killer who will drive him to the brink of insanity.

ABOUT
THE AUTHOR Jo
Nesbø

Jo Nesbø played football for Norway’s premier league team Modle, but his dream of playing professionally for Spurs was dashed when he tore crucial ligaments in his knee at the age of eighteen. After three years military service he attended business school and formed the band Di derre (Them There). Their second album topped the charts in Norway, but he continued working as a financial analyst, crunching numbers during the day and gigging at night. When commissioned by a publisher to write a memoir about life on the road with his band, he instead came up with the plot for his first Harry Hole crime novel, The Bat. He is regarded as one of Europe’s leading crime writers, with both The Leopard and Phantom topping the UK bestseller charts, and his novels are published in 40 countries.

Jo Nesbø played football for Norway’s premier league team Modle, but his dream of playing professionally for Spurs was dashed when he tore crucial ligaments in his knee at the age of eighteen. After three years military service he attended business school and formed the band Di derre (Them There). Their second album topped the charts in Norway, but he continued working as a financial analyst, crunching numbers during the day and gigging at night. When commissioned by a publisher to write a memoir about life on the road with his band, he instead came up with the plot for his first Harry Hole crime novel, The Bat. He is regarded as one of Europe’s leading crime writers, with both The Leopard and Phantom topping the UK bestseller charts, and his novels are published in 40 countries.

ABOUT
THE TRANSLATOR Don
Bartlett

Don Bartlett is the translator behind some of the most read and talked about Norwegian books of recent years. From Jo Nesbø’s successful crime books to the titanic introspection of Karl Ove Knausgård and his seminal My Struggle series. Bartlett has worked with some of the biggest names in Norwegian literature and has helped make their books into international best-sellers. We caught up with him at the National Centre for Writing in Norwich’s Dragon Hall to chat with him about his career as a translator, the runaway success of Knausgård’s My Struggle, the recent rise in Norwegian literature and just how difficult it is to translate dialect into English.

Don Bartlett is the translator behind some of the most read and talked about Norwegian books of recent years. From Jo Nesbø’s successful crime books to the titanic introspection of Karl Ove Knausgård and his seminal My Struggle series. Bartlett has worked with some of the biggest names in Norwegian literature and has helped make their books into international best-sellers. We caught up with him at the National Centre for Writing in Norwich’s Dragon Hall to chat with him about his career as a translator, the runaway success of Knausgård’s My Struggle, the recent rise in Norwegian literature and just how difficult it is to translate dialect into English.

NOMINATING LIBRARY COMMENTS

Excellent crime novel, successor to Steig Larssen.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

Country
Norway
Original Language
Norwegian
Author
Publisher
Harvill Secker
Translator
Don Bartlett

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