Mette-Marit shelves controversial French writer – Dagbladet.no

(Dagbladet): It is the so-called literary train that Crown Princess Mette-Marit interviews authors and tells about his interest in literature.

In a conversation with Roy Jacobsen and Helga Flatland she pulls the controversial French writer Michel Houellebecq as a of their favorites.

He is among the nation’s most acclaimed writers, but has also been accused of writing vulgar and pornographic, as well as to promote Islamophobic and sexist attitudes.

In 2001 had Houellebecq according to The Paris Review defend himself in court after being reviewed by civil rights groups for having stated in an interview that “Islam is the stupidest religion.”

Very suspended

Mette-Marit stated that “The possibility of an island” (2005) as his favorite book of the author. It caused a sensation when it arrived and is about a comedian who travels around with shows such as “We will have group sex with Palestinian woman” and “Lick me in the Gaza Strip.”

According to NRK Review writes Houellebecq so that “we never quite know whether he is for or against Jews, for or against burqas, or porn, for that matter.”

– Everyone says that “The map and the terrain” is his best book, and I’m totally disagree. My favorite is “The possibility of an island,” says Crown Princess Mette-Marit.

– I have a tend to be very hung up on writers, and have read all of them when I first start. I can spend very much time on it, betrayed the crown princess too.

Have mom

Princess Mette-Marit’s first litteraturtog went from Bodo to Stjørdal last year. Today, she sat down on the train again, from Trondheim to Lillehammer and the opening of the Norwegian Festival of Literature.

With him on the trip, she has her mother, Marit Tjessem.

– For me it has always been important that literature really hit me and gives me the feeling of being a human being. Great literature has always treated what it means to be human, said the Crown Princess in her opening speech and highlighted the Astrid Lindgren’s “The Brothers Lionheart” as a book that has been important to her.

– literature has in recent years been characterized by the autobiographical. And it seems as though many treat it a little tricky word “identity”, said Mette-Marit.

Just “identity” is the theme for this year’s litteraturtog; one one leselyst action initiated by the Crown Princess, where the train stops at several stations along the book presentation with famous authors.

Started early

The journey started at the main library in Trondhem at 8:40 today, where Mette-Marit were met Flower child, before she went in to meet the first authors, Roy Jacobsen and Helga Flatland.

The start of the book presentation did not go smoothly for themselves for the crown princess, who laughingly admitted that she had misplaced paperwork with the preparing questions to the authors.

Roy Jacobsen says he has to sit down and write once, when he gets a sentence in your head, whether he is in bed or sitting on the bus.

There is something Mette-Marit can recognize.

– When I write speeches, for example, or working on preparations for this. A little while ago I got up at three o’clock at night when I remembered something about literature train. When I’m working on a project, there is not much else that can fit. It could be a little difficult to combine with other aspects of life, said the Crown Princess.

Open to the public

Later today she talk to authors Tore Renberg and Harald Rosenløw-Eeg in Singapore, and then critics Kaja Schjerven-Mollerin and Knut Hoem in Ringebu.

At each station’s train library cart open to the public, who can exchange books and browse the shelves with Crown Prince essence own favorite books.

In the end the train up in Lillehammer, where she will give a speech during the opening ceremony for literature festival in Maihaugsalen.

Told about the danger

Tomorrow Crown Princess Mette-Marit first meet Ruth Lillegraven and Ingvild Rishøi literature salon at Lillehammer, before taking a last-minute trip by train to Hamar and authors Maria Navarro Skar Anger and Ida Hegazi Høyer.

Last year literature train particularly widely discussed in connection with stop in Snåsa, where Crown Princess talked about the role of literature around taboo themes.

There she told among other things that disappear into the world of books had been particularly important to her that small, because his father was an alcoholic. And she Karl Ove Knaus Gårds “My Struggle” has meant a lot to her.

– For me, the hardest issue in my life been my relationship with my father and my relationship to death. The last sentence of “My Struggle,” the first volume, I quote often within me, at times daily, she said about the passage l heights as follows:

“And death, which I had always considered the most important size in life, dark, transferor, was no more than a pipe springs a leak, a branch that bends in the wind, a jacket that slides off a hanger and falls to the floor “.