“The one person you can trust 100% is the reader. Readers aren’t stupid. I’ve learnt that I can leave things out and not bother to include everything.” In 2005, New York Times compared the Norwegian writer to Knut Hamsun and called his novel ‘Out Stealing Horses’ one of that year’s best novels. In this interview Per Petterson talks about his writing, how he started out trying to be like his favorite writer Ernest Hemingway – and how all attempts failed: “It took me until the mid 1980s to be able to achieve anything,” he says. “If I am completely honest then my problem now isn’t that I think nothing fresh will come to me, but the anxiety that it won’t.”

Moreover, Petterson grew up in a working class family and sees a Norway today where “you’re supposed to show off your money and success.To have not much money in Norway today is embarrassing.”

Per Petterson (b. 1952) was interviewed by Kim Skotte in connection to the Louisiana Literature festival at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark in August 2013.

Camera: Klaus Elmer and Mathias Nyholm
Edited by: Kamilla Bruus
Produced by: Christian Lund
Copyright: Louisiana Channel, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, 2014

Supported by Nordea-fonden