Anniversaries, 29 March
Jo Nesbø
The Norwegian, Jo Nesbø, is one of Norway’s most appreciated and successful crime writers. He was born in Oslo as Jon Nesbø, but when he was 16 he formally changed his first name to Jo, which was what his parents had originally thought of calling him. Already when he was very small, the family moved to Molde where he grew up and attended school. His mother was a librarian and read a lot, his father was a company director who often liked to tell stories that he had made up himself for his three s...
Anniversaries, 29 March
Marcel Aymé
French author born in the town of Joigny, Burgundy, as the youngest of six children. His father was a cavalry farrier. His mother died when he was very young, so he was raised by his maternal grandparents who owned a brickworks at Villers-Robert, a small village in the Jura. After his grandparents died, he was looked after by an aunt who lived in the nearby town of Dole. These are the places in which many of Aymé’s novels are set. The family was radical and anti-clerical, a fact that plagued th...
Photo: Peter Peitsch (1995) / www.peitschphoto.com
Sample of authors
Schlink, Bernhard
The German lawyer and author Bernhard Schlink was born in Grossdornberg (now part of the city of Bielefeld) and grew up in Heidelberg. His mother was Swiss and his father German, a professor of theology at the University of Heidelberg. As a young man Schlink was interested in literature; he wanted either to become an author or to study history and sociology. But he followed his father's advice...