just trust that they will. read the subtext i mean if you if you if you drop in on any conversation you will you will quickly get what it's about you may even be the cutest bug want to talk involved so in with the real feel in the blank spaces that. cultural distance now results now i heard you say that you had their perfectly cloudless in their region child will arrive before your father revealed the biggest drama of his life his collaboration away with an absence what was so shocking to you about that i think it was that it was the fact that i grew up hearing the stories from my mother's side of the family who was in the resistance movement and who were active my road his were active fighting the nazis and and so it was i grew up with this

image of. the hero of resistance and the evil of the german helmets when my father told me at the age of fifteen you know that. it's time that you learn what i was doing during the war the first image that came to mind was this german helmets on the head of my father it just it just didn't fit because my my father at the time and the woman being so was my hero and i think not only being my father but the us the as a person as a as a character now that state of shock a state of called native descent as that experience is very essential to all crime novels this is what you ultimately teach here readers turning their imaginary world upside down is that just laid surely trick for you or some sort of psychological.

revenge that you carry out throughout their lives what i learned just sort of the hard way was what we see in modern storytelling is. the hero being turned into the villain. and mars versa. it's the thin line between good and evil it's. looking at the character's life and actions in the new lights and try to handle the contradictions that is in everybody's lives that we you know one morning we wake up most of the time we we hope to be the heroes in our room movies but sometimes we we have a situation where if we have an almost look at ourselves in our actions we have to admit that we were and i think. trying to it's not except at least you realized that that's who we are adults how we act as human

beings. it makes the stories all our lives slightly different and i think that's a kind of stories are right where the. protagonist of the story is. sometimes the hero and sometimes not and you are supposed to see the world through these characters odds and accept that's how it is in you dealt with your father's difficult moral choice in your third novel the redbreast which dows into the history of no race collaboration and analysis did you feel any conflict of interest when writing it was there any pressure between you as a son and you as a writer. i think that it's. it's impossible to do to try to. remain objective as a writer. at least as a writer of fiction i i don't think that's the point. i don't think there's any

meaning in tries easy to stick to such as historical details you have to do that i am what i'm doing is i will pick five different individuals who have different reasons for joining them all says to try at least to give. multiple. views of. what was going on what the future looked like what the political situation was also i have a diversity of very human motives selfish motives political motives. even idealistic motives which were. also why some there and some women joined the losses and thinking they were fighting and fighting for their country and defending the borders when your father made that decision to join the german troops i think most of the stalin crimes and

the abuses of the communist regime were not yet known the documents about the gulags and the purges would come out of years later and similarly most of the crimes of the nats regime were not known at that time capsule you know and all of that do things that would have made the same choice. i don't think so he was when he told the balcony. about his after the war he had to spend three years in jail before for having a fault with analysis and he said i think that was a fair punishment for being as wrong as i was. he said out i didn't necessarily make the wrong moral choice but i made the wrong choice. based on lack of information i did it i made it on the basis of what i thought was the future of of europe and my country was was the old democracy is being almost bankrupt you know it it's the. it is being on the other side of the world and it

looked like the future was in the hands of either stalling or hitler due to strong men in europe at the dawn reading that book as a russian it was a very unusual experience for me because we as a nation are far more in a vast in seeing ourselves as a country that resisted. and i think for the russians it's much more difficult to separate the personal you know the law for our relatives from the historical reality of war since you think still attempted to do some of that do you have any advice for your russian fans to do i think you know for me it was quite it was easy to get some song i had to sit down and really talk to mark all the. difficult questions my father was were open of all did he said you know if you don't want to talk about it we don't need to talk about it ask me any question you like and just spending time with him and having him telling his own story not making excuses for

. what they did made me in the you know in the story can be told in the least two ways you know i was born in leningrad and i grew up hearing the stories of the heroism of the people and it was also around the teenage years when i first read about how widespread cannibalism was in the city and what's most shocking to me was the people who sacrificed their lives for others and people who ate others to survive sometimes including their own children they leave on the same streets under the same circumstances. you dealt with people who crossed into the dark side so to say in most of your books do you understand what is it that ultimately separates the monsters from the heroes no and i don't is. as a world of fiction with some poems or of these that i sometimes feel like the most . useless member of society because what i'm doing i'm just asking questions

i can't give any answers. i don't do scientific work but i do think that fiction is. necessary for asking those questions how people choose given moral dilemmas like my father did. during the second world war. those choices and how we make those choices or to me the most central theme of all my books are actually one of the characters in. prisons that choice between hitler and stalin as a choice between the sister nation germany and variance the russians and i think have geopolitical choice is back and it is even framed in the same way this thing and their regions may be faced with the same. your father faced two years back.

i think the choice will come back. you know time after time whenever there's a conflict of interest we sometimes come tuesday with moral choices. but the conflict of interest will always be there of course that what we're striving for is to is to make our interest internationally common that we share interest but working to towards that goal is of course a long long way to go and along that way i'm sure there will be people over the world having to make that choice and choice but i think that's just ridiculous of relevant to the regions because there are lots and lots of nato and russia accessorize this ride of the in the region coastline doesn't make you worried do you pay attention to that when i was in the army or the air. i spent a year on the on the russian border over close close to the russian border and it was a. always it was always that the grio tension and it was always the image of the russian

enemy but it was very strange because this was in the north of norway and on personal level there was this kinship or friendly at the truth towards russians because all the russians had sort of saved the north of norway and the corporation and when the resistance movement on the russians during world war two so it was. also the same. docs in the way that they were supposed to be the enemy but on the personal level you could feel that that the people living there they were they were more were the bots i would say the united states but some all the enemy invading them then the russians oh s.n.'s where we have to take a short break now but we'll be back in just a few moments stay tuned. on. what

politicians do you should. put themselves on the line. to get except the reject. so when you want to express an injury. or something want to be rich. but you'd like to be close this is what before korea can people get. interested always in the waters of all. this should. when a loved one is murder it's natural to seek the death penalty for the murder i would prefer it be to the death penalty just because i think that's the fair thing the right thing research shows that for every nine executions one convict just found dennison the idea that we were executing innocent. people is terrified lose just

move to the present and that we even many victims' families want the death penalty to be abolished the reason we have to keep the death penalty here is because that's what murder victim's families what that's going to give them peace that's going to give them justice and we come in and say. not quite you know we've been through this this isn't the way. who. who.

are. welcome back to worlds apart from the best selling a region offer you know as well i heard you say that it's impossible to write anything without being political in some sense or another and. in another novel of yours they have a snowman you do we have the american president since you into the narrative do you think donald trump's name will ever appear in your books i'm not sure i think it is too obvious in a way it's. better to refer to an american leader over the sort. and i think he will he will spring to mind so i don't think to seize the name it's not even this is a real thing the way political candidates present themselves as also a way of telling. story about that society is down about themselves and i think we

can see in particular in western politics that voters who used to prefer sanitised picture perfect candidates increasingly all form. a character is of a certain kind more raggett characters as a storyteller how do you interpret that. i think it's people are getting in bits it's hard with the the way the democracy works not necessarily democracies but the way the elite has gradually taken all the politics it may not be the case in every country but i think definitely in countries like you know the states it's reaction it's people really using democracies in the way democracy is you could say it shouldn't be used but then again should be used to choose through candidates. i think you know where it's it

is still it is still the ideal of the politicians being close to the to the people so it's not that need to get rid of the elite and choose somebody from the people one of the reasons why harry hole your main protagonist is so appealing is because he has the vices and the vulnerabilities of a common man but he can also be the winner of the day from time to time i'm not comparing him to donald trump in any way but don't you think that they do have something in common at least in terms of this ruggedness that they. will definitely . i think. the big difference is of course. some of the people in power in the room today seem to really. admire themselves in the case is the opposite he despises himself and he's leaning. his service is to to to the public. in

a way that it's he's guilty but he has no wimbish and so i think in some ways similar in most ways his. visit your work has been criticized by sound for its fascination of in the traditional some within say paint charcoal masculinity harry hole is ultimately an old natural manholes plays dragons and saves maidens. since norway is a global advocate of equality have you ever felt the pressure of putting her whole in a position of pushing a stroller or giving him the female boss. no no not really i mean in the story is buyouts and in the big jewel is in the visual story and in my case or in his case this is the individual. i would never. even nurture

the idea of writing stories that would function in society in informing people's political attitudes or. having my stories uniformed in the ways we would fit in to what's what is on the agenda of. today's media and interesting harried the famine this with as appealing to their readers as harry the guy's guy. and there were really thought of harry being. a popular character on the story writing about harry i remember i mean after all the percent of readers or women so if you if you really want to be with a ship you should use or you should maybe have. those with theirs in the back you mind a number of i can remember in my first novel i have are is sleep with a prostitute in sydney. and i was maybe thinking when i when i wrote that ok.

just. needs for him to do that but. he will definitely not be popular with with women but he never know because i think there is actually a very interesting trend in western fiction the more people talk about women's empowerment the batterer. are the sales of the books that show man in dominant position fifty shades of grey is the vast example but i think your books also fit into that how do you explain that is there a disconnect between what people say publicly or politically or what they prefer privately well i do think as long as the stories are honest as long as you represent the my. way of thinking on his behavior in a way that is believable and in the way that can be explained then i think it's it's interesting i think that over the normal. function as

a reaction to what is going on in society and we are always. most of those locally we are intellectually curious so we always look for the opposite point of view in in the snow man you deal specifically with the topic of infidelity and how differently it's perceived by men and women was it just a convenient plot for you as a novelist or did you have some sort of a mad a mass as an author for all the straying women out there. no i don't think so i can't really remember how our our came up with a plot or i see in this moment stored with this moment which i represented for a friend of mine i was making or making a movie as a potential title for the movie but he didn't use it so it started with me thinking about thinking about. as not. but

and then i read. for me sort of disturbing fact based on research was that. every fifteen percent have a different problem from who you believe is your father this was a swedish review actually the number was twenty percent in a no i didn't believe in twenty percent so was it ok let's. wise it down to fifteen percent and which led to the research house has confirmed and to me that. it was i think it was more the motive or how you put important. knowing who you fall is that it is something that we to some extent. try to pretend it's not important the longer that society has sort of taken on the role of the family and the family in blog does not have the horten but of course i think it's rooted that we in order to know who we are we need to know who our parents are

which again. maybe points back to my own background but you also have in that specific you know you have several examples of fatherhood and sometimes people who are not the father is a more i kinder to the children and people who are biological fathers i can clearly see from your work that this topic of fatherhood is important to you while you have a whole series of children why why is it so appealing to you as a writer. i don't know it was it was never like a set out. thinking that ok i'm going to write about father son relationships i can just see the is important for me because i'm writing about it and many more books i started out with different agenda and then i died is where i end up and you know it has even made me try to analyze my relationship to my father was it as good as our room. and i think it is but i still think maybe because i love my father so much

there is still that longing for. the of having you probably still not having followed the maybe because i've seen close friends of mine who didn't have a good relationship with a father and. for me that boiled. down to loss to me would be so big. it is something that outward inspect in my stories i heard somebody say that it's our parents whose career has up. make us into the monsters we are and it's the children give us a chance to straighten ourselves out and to become here is again to believe in that . no not really it's interesting i mean right now if you listen to. this in the behavioral lists. they're saying no. you

come you know readymades your. it's hugely exaggerated to what extent parents really can influence the children. even the schools that we go to are not important. we really can be changed so if that's the case as parents you know we can with you know it's there's not the most we can do your a very versatile writer you're have crime novels you have children's literature you have tried your hand at shakespeare you wrote a very newsy t.v. series do you still get the kick and the excitement from the writing as you have been writing your first book yeah i didn't mean i mean when i wrote my first books i didn't have any idea so i just thought the idea in your biography how possessed your world by the hero almost persist with the. with the process of writing just

putting words on the page and seeing that this is a chapter this is slowly forming into your novel so then installed with the process and then the ideas came afterwards i still get a kick out of. our writing when it works it doesn't you know i don't like any other. normal person i don't do good work every day but those days where. do you get good work done it's it's a great days and it's a sin feeling and he said in one of the engine is that you would trade all your writing success to be a professional football player which is very similar to how i'll bear commune a french writer who got noble peace prize nobel prize for literature is sad he was also asked why they're here with how he would choose between theater and football and he said that here which is football without any hesitation what is it about that game that is so appealing to writers i don't know i think i think elton john room steward said the same thing about that and it wasn't even the football career

which is playing one cup final at wembley i think it's of course is something that we grew up with it's is the dream of. making the perfect school in perth with gold it's the physical with something you can you you can touch i was just. i don't for many years now rock climbing our story quite late in life and i did my first well it was a difficult route of i've been working on and when i came down i got a message out for the first down my book was on the top of the u.k. besa list and mark climbing partner asked me you know what makes you most happy that you're on top there all i just did this route and i had to admit it was doing the route which was for me a personal challenge she was moved climbing history in in any way buddy. it's just

the fact that you have the physical. movie itself you think. it was so concrete being a bestseller it's it depends on so many things i mean there are so many novels being published every day that won't be noticed i guess it's just a feeling scoring a goal. it is it's a birth to school thing well we have to leave it there but thank you very much for being so generous with us thank you thank radar of yours to keep this conversation going in our social media pages and. same place same time here and also part. of.

responding in this hour the need. arise how. young is this diagram how do you want. to impose the good book pretty. rigorous about it the most the most i hope you do i mean look if you get to be the one has a funny but it was you know i love it when you. get out of order. and write down the bank all of you work on the base walker chemical lies and as our business is going through that he would develop a new treatment dale intermarriages no monsters no that. these industries out of

polluting your dissenting ignored your money and most of them live even also i mean he's also the mother of one like me to the last day in this. town the. go in and you may never get out some sort of the most of. my teenage gang rules here. don't wanna be moved. the minute. you were. told.

her i. was. looking for the yeah. and melanie when. i'm looking little. i see. prosecution. the thread you'll find. somebody to i mean. business models used by american corporations.

and the solution. an association. is it is just somebody deleting me to an investigative documentary. ghost you'll. see. our mission is to reassert our sovereignty reform the liberal international order the white house questions the relevance of a number of key international bodies and threatens to scrap by a mile stone cold war era nuclear agreement with.