Meet Zeshan Shakar - Selected Title Author
We are happy to present our selected title author Zeshan Shakar. He has written They Call me the Wolf (original title: De kaller meg ulven). The book is one of NORLA’s Selected Titles of the spring 2023.
Read our interview with Zeshan here.
What is the book about?
They Call Me the Wolf is about journeys – both across continents and within countries and cities. The main character, Ulven, has a mother with roots in Northern Norway and a father who came from Pakistan as a foreign worker. His father is thrown out of his public housing and instead of finding a new place to live in Norway, he decides to return to Pakistan. His son goes to his father’s apartment to help him pack. In this short journey from the son’s middle-class home to his father’s subsidized apartment, memories of a life with various cultures, classes, and expectations are awakened. What legacy is left after his father’s fifty years in Norway? Why isn’t there more? In what ways does a legacy pass from generation to generation? The novel focuses on these questions as seen through the lives of an atypical Norwegian family.
What inspired you to write this book?
2021 marked the 50th anniversary of the first Pakistani foreign workers in Norway. The anniversary provided long-awaited material in the form of stories from the first generation of Pakistani in Norway – stories that were in the process of being lost. The first generation was the forgotten one, the one that laid the groundwork so the next generation could have the opportunities they’ve had in Norway, and later have their stories told. I felt a strong drive to lift up these first-generation stories, and not just the successful ones – the ones we mostly heard during the 50th anniversary – but also a story about a person who came to Norway with hopes and dreams and wasn’t quite able to fulfill them.
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
