The Unworthy by Roy Jacobsen — a fierce and moving portrait of teens at war
In the epilogue of Roy Jacobsen’s new novel about occupied Norway during the second world war, the now elderly Carl, who in youth had been part of a working-class gang of Oslo teenagers, petty larcenists and accidental resistance workers, reflects on the fact that “around ten per cent of the Norwegian population took part — more or less actively — in the resistance struggle, ten per cent were collaborators, what we generally call traitors, while eighty per cent were indifferent ”.
It is this indifference that fascinates in a book that brings to life the poverty-stricken wartime ghettos of Oslo, where troubled 15-year-olds assume parental duties over their younger siblings after their mothers and fathers disappear — either физически или психически. Недостатъчната е напоена с миризмата на пържен лук, трип, варено мляко и немити тела. Yet it is permeated also with the polarising opulence of contraband: rosehip jam, whisky, caviar, Meissen porcelain.
This then, is a poten...
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