With his seventh novel, Collapse, Édouard Louis has now completed his celebrated family saga about his own upbringing and family.

Louis writes ruthlessly and skillfully about subjects such as class distinctions, violence, racism, gender, and political power and powerlessness, and his writing has become a point of reference and inspiration for writers across the world. Through the seven novels making up his family saga, he portrays the social structures that are the basis for the violence he experienced as a child, as well as his ambivalence towards his own family and the wider working class. However, he is most ruthless when exposing his own life and flaws.

Louis has two new novels out this year: Collapse and Monique Escapes. In Collapse, Louis explores his older brother’s decline, one he both feared and came to for safety, and who died, aged 38, after a life of alcoholism, poverty, neglect and self-inflicted violence.

In Monique Escapes, he portrays his mother’s escape from yet another destructive and violent relationship, marked by alcohol and degrading treatment. The novel depicts her struggle to find a way out when she has neither money, an education certificate nor a driver’s license.

In both novels, Louis explores how social and economic structures shapes and limits people’s possibilities to create a free life. “The most political thing I do, is portray that which is invisible,” Louis said last time he visited the House of Literature. He returned now to talk about completing his family saga, his literary ruthlessness and the way ahead. He was joined by writer colleague and critic Erlend Loe, who has followed Louis’s body of work closely.

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En octobre 2022, Annie Ernaux a reçu le prix Nobel de littérature, en tant que première femme française, « pour le courage et l'acuité clinique avec lesquels elle découvre les racines, les étrangetés et les contraintes collectives de la mémoire personnelle ». Avec des livres comme Les Années, Une femme et L'Événement, qui font tomber les barrières entre autobiographie, fiction et sociologie, Ernaux a gagné un large lectorat dans le monde entier, et a agrandi ce qui est considéré comme un langage littéraire. D'une écriture économique et non sentimentale, elle fait émerger des expériences collectives à travers des histoires personnelles, et montre comment la classe, le genre et les structures sociales nous façonnent, et comment des événements apparemment mineurs peuvent changer toute une vie.

Les livres d'Ernaux sont à la fois une archéologie personnelle et une analyse sociologique, et montrent comment ce qui est profondément personnel, aussi toujours est politique. La double conscience de classe occupe une place centrale dans son expérience et son œuvre. Elle s'est décrite comme une « émigrante de classe » ou une « transfuge de classe », quelqu'un qui a quitté le monde de la classe ouvrière sans pour autant trouver complètement sa place dans la bourgeoisie.

Cet automne, Ernaux a deux nouvelles publications en norvégien, toutes deux traduites par Henninge Margrethe Solberg. L'Autre fille est écrite comme une lettre à la sœur qu'elle n'a jamais rencontrée, un texte sur le manque, la culpabilité et comment le silence familial peut être aussi formateur que ce qui est effectivement dit. Dans Les Armoires vides, le premier roman d'Ernaux de 1974, s'établit la voix implacable et profondément existentielle qui devait marquer toute son œuvre. Y est racontée l'histoire d'une jeune femme qui tente de surmonter l'expérience d'un avortement illégal, et qui doit démêler le passé pour comprendre comment son éducation a façonné son identité.

De retour à la Maison de littérature, Ernaux a rencontré Kjerstin Aukrust, maître de conférences en littérature française à l’Université d’Oslo, pour une conversation sur la classe, le travail de mémoire et sur comment l'écriture peut devenir une forme d'archéologie de sa propre vie.

La conversation a eu lieu dans la Salle des fêtes de l'Université d’Oslo.

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«The moral component of history, the most necessary component, is simply a single questions, asked over and over again: When it mattered, who sided with justice and who sided with power?» One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This, Omar El Akkad

The lack of a response from the West to Israel’s brutal war in Gaza reveals how the West values certain lives more than others, according to author and journalist Omar El Akkad. For El Akkad, born in Egypt and raised in Qatar, the West long represented the polar opposite to everything he hated about the Middle East: The corruption, the censorship, the surveillance, the exaltation of corrupt leaders.

As a teenager, El Akkad moved with his family to North America, and became a part of the liberal Western world order. Despite a few reservations, he kept his faith in the West as a region committed to human rights, freedom, justice and respect for the law. Until October 8th, 2023, when Israel launched their latest war against Gaza.

The essay collection One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This is a reckoning with what El Akkad considers to be the West’s double standards. He exposes rhetoric and euphemisms that allow murder on innocent civilians, that necessitates the new acronym WCNSF (wounded child, no surviving family), and shows how the Gaza war is part of a longer history of us versus them.

Omar El Akkad is an award-winning author and journalist of many years. One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This is his first non-fiction book, it has garnered broad attention and is under translation into a number of languages.

At the House of Literature, El Akkad was joined by author and journalist Yohan Shanmugaratnam for a conversation about anger, the suffering in Gaza and Western double standards.

The event was supported by NORAD.

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When Nigerian author Chimamanda Adichie publishes her first novel in 12 years, it is a real event. With award winning and critically acclaimed titles such as Americanah, Half of a Yellow Sun and We Should All Be Feminists, Adichie has attracted a large readership across the world.

Both in her novels and in her non-fiction, she explores what it means to be a woman and a feminist in the world today, and through her own books as well as the many aspiring writers she mentors and influences, she contributes to a greater diversity of stories and literary voices.

In her new novel, Dream Count, we follow four women who, each in their own way, come up against societal expectations and limits as to what women can do and ask for. Chiamaka spends the pandemic lockdown recounting all her failed relationships, Zikora tries to track down her ex, who left her when she became pregnant, Omelogor starts a blog addressed to men, and the maid Kadiatou tries to carve out a new life for herself and her daughter in the US.

Weaving together their histories, and in close portraits of the four women, Adichie explores female experiences such as society’s expecations for when you are to marry and have children, darker themes like abortion and female genital mutilation, but also female solidarity and sisterhood.

Since her literary debut in 2003, Chimamanda Adichie has become a literary and feminist icon, and she has introduced African literature to readers across the world.

She has been awarded the Commonwealth Writer’s Prize, the Orange Prize and the US National Book Critics Circle Award, just to mention a few. Her books have been translated into more than 30 languages.

In Oslo, she was joined by journalist and editor Jessika Gedin for a conversation about women’s experiences, society’s expectations and the universal need to be loved.

The conversation took place in the University of Oslo’s Ceremonial Hall and was supported by NORAD.

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Wole Talabi is a Nigerian science fiction author. He is best known for his short stories, most of them collected in the collections Incomplete Solutions and Convergence Problems. His latest novel Shigidi and the Brass Head of Obalufon won the prestigious Nommo award for best novel. Talabi has also edited the anthologies Africanfuturism and Mothersound, both central publications in African fantasy and science fiction.

This is Talabi’s reading list:

- Nnedi Okorafor, Lagoon

- Kojo Laing, Woman of the Aeroplanes

- Lauren Beukes, Zoo City

- Tade Thompson, Rosewater

- Tlotlo Tsamaase, Womb City

- T. L. Huchu, Library of the Dead

He also mentions:

- Ben Okri

- Chinua Achebe

- Wole Soyinka

- Carmen Maria Machado

- Arthur C. Clarke

- Isaac Asimov

- Larry Niven, Ringworld

- Jerry Pournelle

- Cyprian Ekwensi

- Flora Nwapa

- Pemi Aguda, Ghostroots

- Amos Tutuola, My Life in the Bush of Ghosts and The Palm-Wine Drinkard

The host in this episode is Daniel Røkholt.

Editing and production by the House of Literature.

Music by Ibou Cissokho.

The House of Literature’s project to promote African literature is supported by NORAD.

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Youssef Rakha is an award-winning author of both novels and poetry, as well as a journalist and a photographer. I 2009, he was selected by the Hay Festival as one of the best Arabic writers under 40. He is known for The Crocodiles-trilogy, following a group of poets before, during and after the 2011 revolution. The Dissenters is his first novel written in English.

The story is told by Nour. When his mother dies, he starts cleaning out her things in the attic, and soon discovers a far more complex portrait of the woman he thought he knw. From her forced marriage to a far older man in the 50s – whom she left, via a liberated French student and a pious, religious mother to a radical activist during the 2011 revolution.

His mother’s many faces mirror the changing history of Egypt, as well as the limitations and possibilities for women through that turbulent time.

At the House of Literature, Rakha is joined by Teresa Pepe, Professor of Arabic literature at the University of Oslo, for a conversation about Egyptian history, revolutions, mothers and sons.

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What characterizes the new Arabic literature? Writers involved in the Arab Spring are now imprisoned, exiled or living with the political repression, wars and disillusionment that has marked the region ever since. How are these experiences expressed in literature and the broader culture?

Teresa Pepe is professor of Arabic literature at the University of Oslo. Her research has focused on Arabic literature and culture during and after the Arab Spring. She is the author of the book Blogging from Egypt: Digital Literature, and editor of several collective volumes, including Arabic Literature in a Posthuman World.

In this talk, she will examine how Arabic culture has evolved since the 2011 uprisings. She will illustrate how authors such as Ahmed Naji, Mohammed Rabie, Basma Abd el-Aziz, and Alaa Abd al-Fattah employ dystopian and horrific narratives to reflect a world that is rapidly shifting due to ecological and technological changes while political crackdowns, wars, and violence are on the rise.

These are the books Pepe focuses on in her lecture, all available in English translations:

Ahmed Naji, Using Life

Mohammad Rabie, Otared

Basm Abdel Aziz, The Queue

Alaa Abd Al-Fattah, You Have Not Yet Been Defeated

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The Arab Spring is when Egyptian Youssef Rakha first starts writing novels. Moroccan Soukaina Habiballah publishes her first poetry collection shortly after, while French Moroccan Leïla Slimani works as a journalist at the time, reporting on the protests unfolding throughout Northern Africa and the Maghreb, before turning to fiction.

How have these experiences shaped their writing? All three writers explore the quest for freedom, whether on a personal or a collective level.

Can we talk about a post-Arab Spring literature, or is that merely a handy label for the West?

«Just like Arab Muslim lives, Arab Muslim writing is not worth the civilized world’s attention,» Rakha wrote in an essay in Guernica last year.

Soukaina Habiballah is the award-winning author of four poetry collections, a short story collection, a novel and a play, Nini Ya Momo.

Youssef Rakha was selected among the Hay Festival’s best Arabic writers under 40 in 2009. He is the author of a number of critically acclaimed novels and poetry, most recently the novel The Dissenters.

Leïla Slimani is one of the most prominent literary voices in Frankophone literature today. She won the prestigious Prix Goncourt in 2016 for her novel Lullaby, and has excited critics with her trilogy of a French-Moroccan family saga.

Habiballah, Rakha and Slimani was joined by journalist and critic Helene Hovden Hareide for a conversation about freedom and revolutions, about the power of literature for readers, authors and for moving the world forward.

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