Meet Hilde Rød-Larsen - Selected Title Author
We are happy to present our selected title author Hilde Rød-Larsen. She has written Diamond Nights (original title: Diamantkvelder). The book is one of NORLA’s Selected Titles of the spring 2023.
Read our interview with Hilde here.
What is the book about?
Diamond Nights is a novel that examines an entire human life with one specific experience as a pivot point and the #metoo movement as a backdrop. As a young student in London, Agnete – now 48 – initiated a sexual relationship with a friend’s father. This man was a psychologist, he said Agnete was sick, and the sex took place on his therapy couch. Throughout her life, Agnete has never thought of herself as a victim in this relationship, but an underlying question in the novel is whether she might have been nonetheless. The novel consists of three parts that attempt to circle in on this question in different ways.
What inspired you to write this book?
The only thing I knew when I started writing this novel was that I wanted to try to write in the first person. This was to attempt to force myself to write in a different way than I had in my debut novel, Summertime. Then I wrote the opening scene. It was about a woman reminiscent of me in many ways – same age, same city, same career – who has something she’s trying to figure out, something from her past. I wrote this quite quickly but spent a long time determining exactly what it was that she was figuring out. It ended up being experiences that are reminiscent – but not carbon copies – of my own. Upon reflection, I also see that the #metoo movement contributed to this being the specific story I was going to tell, even if it wasn’t something I was conscious of when I started writing.
Read more
See full presentation of the book here
Read more about the author here
See all NORLA’s Selected Titles for the spring 2023 here
