Thursday, February 14, 2008

Forthcoming K O Dahl titles

Here in the UK, Faber have published The Fourth Man and the soon to be released The Man in the Window by K O Dahl and have signed up for two more of his titles, #2 and #6 in the Gunnarstranda and Frølich series. In the US Thomas Dunne Books will publish all four titles, beginning with The Fourth Man in March. (The Fourth Man is #5 and The Man in the Window #3 in the series).

From an article at Norway, the official site in the United States:
Kjell Ola Dahl has written numerous crime novels and his books have been translated into several languages. He has received several awards for his literary works, including the prestigious Norwegian Riverton Prize for his novel ”A Little Golden Ring” (”En liten gyllen ring”), in 2000. Now, no less than four novels from his popular series about the Oslo based police inspectors Gunnarstranda and Frølich are to be published in the U.S. by Thomas Dunne Books. We caught up with the author over a transatlantic cup of coffee.

A Realistic Approach
“The Scandinavian crime has a somewhat more realistic approach to the everyday life of ordinary people,” Dahl says, commenting on the considerable attention the genre has gained from an international audience the last years.
There has been a wave of popularity for this kind of literature, Dahl explains. His own novels have already had a formidable success in countries like Germany and Great Britain.

Dahl thinks this genre is appreciated by a global audience because it offers something else than the stereotypical crime. His novels feature both corrupt businessmen, cynical strippers, drug addicts and film noir type femme fatales, but Dahl also writes within a tradition of Scandinavian social realism.

For readers who are not necessarily familiar with the Norwegian geography and lifestyle, the settings add an exotic touch to the story.
“A lot of people appreciate the local settings, it gives a kind of social anthropology approach to what’s happening,” Dahl says.
Read the rest of the interview here.

3 comments:

Uriah Robinson said...

I have almost finished reading The Man in the Window and I will get my review to you next week.
Very good so far, but why do they translate them out of order?

Maxine Clarke said...

Why indeed, Norm -- perhaps because they are Norwegian (as in Nesbo)? But they do that to the Swedish ones as well....

Karen, have you read any K O Dahl yourself? I have heard the books are very good....

Karen (Euro Crime) said...

I've read The Fourth Man which was not bad but I'm looking forward to The Man in the Window which I *hope* is a more traditional police procedural. TFM was a bit too noir (with a femme fatale) for me.