Anders Behring Breivik did not want to get into a conversation. In one of letters he changed with Norwegian journalist Åsne Seierstad, he announced his willingness to do so and wrote that she could "wash her hands in innocence" through an interview with him, "if anyone claims to be a useful idiot for Me or something. "
But Breivik changed his mind, and Åsne Seierstad wrote her book about him and his victims and Black Friday in July of 2011, where Breivik 77 murdered mostly very young people in Oslo and on small island of Utøya, without an interview.
One of us is called book, it was published in 2013 in Norway and three years later also in many or countries. At opening of Leipzig Book Fair, Åsne Seierstad now receives this year's prize for European understanding. The jury described one of us as a "documentary novel", which was "generally applicable over threatening time in which we live". And she praised Seierstad for "confronting us with whole catastrophic extent of action, in which she brings to mind tragedy of individual."
The prologue of book is luridIn fact, Seierstad begins her book with a scene from action on Utøya: With boys and girls hiding from Breivik. And with Breivik, who is roaming around island in search of new victims. Back and forth it goes in perspective: "She crouched and crept on. They all searched for hiding. It was too late to run away. ", Seierstad describes behavior of a girl. "After first shot, everything was easier," she knows about Breivik.
"The first shot had cost overcoming. It had been almost impossible, but now he stepped forward relaxed, pistol in his hand ". And n, anor trace of all-knowing, presumably with findings of forensic records: "Seconds later, boy who had put his arm around her was hit. The shot went through his back of head, bullet splintered upon penetration, hit cerebellum and shredded brain stem. "
One cannot fail to call this prologue "lurid". Seierstad writes action-driven and makes no secret of fact that it is not only about suffering of victims and empathy with this and perpetrator, but also about tension. Her overture is a deposit for what she later portrays on almost a hundred pages in book, from Breivik's bombing in Oslo's government district to his murder frenzy on Utøya, at end of which he puts himself in policeman's words: "Not you are my Enemies. I regard you as my brethren. I don't have any or things to do with you. "
Breivik showed early behavioral abnormalitiesPreviously, however, Seierstad tells Breivik's 's career and interrupts this report again and again with scenes from lives of some victims, including Bano, a young Kurdish immigrant who, with her parents and two siblings in late nineties, Norway.
Seierstad begins with Breivik's birth as son of a diplomat and a woman whose "life was full of casualties. and loneliness ". The far leaves family early, he is now married fourth time. The little Anders grows up with his mor and older sister and shows early Verhaltensaufälligkeiten. The Youth welfare Office and juvenile Psychiatric services are turned on. "There is no or lack of spontaneity, urge for movement, imagination and empathy", for example. But with increasing age, Breivik's life is not so different from that of or adolescents.
He drifts around in sprayer and hip-hop milieu, breaks off trainings after school, gets into circles of xenophobic Progress Party, earns money with production of fake diplomas, quite a lot of money, "he became rich!", network starts contributing to To write Islam – and in 2006, after end of his diploma forgery, he moved back to his mor, where he lost himself in vastness of Internet, especially in games like World of Warcraft.
It is hard to discover crucial breaking points in this strangely meandering biography of a social outsider, not even when Breivik starts tinkering his bombs on an old farm. Seierstad conveys a great deal of proximity to her hero, but perhaps that is precisely why he thinks back with judgments.
Date Of Update: 15 March 2018, 12:02
