Kåre Conradi and Sunniva Fluge Hole - Selected Title Authors
We are happy to present our selected title author Kåre Conradi. He has written An Enemy of the People – Henrik Ibsen for children (original title: Ibsens En folkefiende), which is illustrated by Sunniva Fluge Hole. The book is one of NORLA’s Selected Titles of the autumn 2024.
What is your book about?
The book is a complete retelling, for children, of Henrik Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People. The book is about one man who finds out that the bathing water in the city’s spa is poisoned. If people drink the water or bathe in it they could die. The man is initially hailed as a folk hero. Then everyone realises that it is going to cost them money, and they turn against him. “How dangerous is this?” they ask in unison.
What inspired you to write this book?
Henrik Ibsen is no longer compulsory in Norwegian schools. Now the teacher decides if Ibsen’s work should be in their lesson plan. After Shakespeare, Ibsen is the most staged playwright in the world. But Shakespeare’s legacy has in many contexts been better protected than Ibsen’s; children’s editions of Shakespeare’s collected works have been around for a long time. So I want to inspire teachers and students about Ibsen while also preserving our cultural heritage. An Enemy of the People is one of his most important plays so I wanted to start there. The goal is for all 25 plays to be retold for children for the first time. I’m very proud to have the work of two wonderful illustrators in these first two books. Sunniva Fluge Hole, who illustrated An Enemy of the People, is someone I’ve worked with before, on the animated film Titina, and I wanted to have her in the first book!
Read more
See full presentation of the book here
Read more about the author here
More about the illustrator here
See all NORLA’s Selected Titles for the autumn 2024 here
