100 Books Like Norwegian by Night

Set in Mexico in the 1930s when the revolutionary government engaged in an active campaign against the Catholic Church, Greene’s hero, the so-called Whiskey Priest, is a drunk who has also failed to adhere to his vow of chastity, but his kindness and commitment to worshippers make him an intensely sympathetic figure, as he is hunted by the local police chief determined to put him behind bars.

The book was a revelation to me when I first read it in college. I did not realize that the Mexican government had engaged in this war against the Church so recently. Nor did I realize that a novel so gripping could be told with such literary grace. 

The once-promising writer Jacob Finch Bonner is out of ideas and down on his luck. When his student Evan Parker proclaims that his work-in-progress is sure to be a runaway hit, Bonner waits to see if this bold proclamation comes to fruition. 

After Bonner learns Parker has died, he decides he’ll usher that story into the world—as his own. But someone knows Bonner isn’t the original author. Shame and suspense intertwine and heighten as this book speeds along. I enjoyed Korelitz’s exploration of how far an author will go for praise or even relevancy. 

This novel also explores an idea that fascinates me: Who “owns” a story? Just because something happened to you or your family, does that mean no one else can tell it or embellish it? Author Anne Lamott says you own everything that happened to you, but how much should you tell, and how will others react… show more.

George Smiley is a most unlikely hero for a spy thriller. He’s old, tired, and just wants to be left with his books and his research. He wears big, comical glasses, and his wife, the lovely Lady Anne, refers to him as her “Toad.” He doesn’t look like a spy at all.

George is old-school—careful, meticulous, and precise. In this book, we are gifted with an insider's view of a gimlet mind as he sifts through the traces of all that’s been buried, in pursuit, not only of the truth but of the foul trick that has turned the British Secret Service inside out. I came to deeply respect George’s integrity, his ability to self-evaluate, and see clearly not only the strategies and ploys of his enemy but also his own flaws and weaknesses.

Stone’s debut novel, a brilliant and prophetic book that is seldom classified as a thriller, but which finds its hero, Rheinhardt, an alcoholic former clarinetist and sometimes disc jockey, slowly unraveling a dark political conspiracy full of apocalyptic potential. Cynical, funny, lost, but deeply moral, Rheinhardt moved me intensely.

The only work of fiction on the list, Nobel Laureate Kurt Hamson’s Hunger (1980) was a game changer for modern literature.

Firmly anchored in the point of view of the narrator, we journey painfully with a man, a writer as a matter of fact, on the way down into the depths of meaningless, despair, and hunger. Adapted into several films, the story reflects how little society values the intellectual capital of people it perceives as the dregs and describes in detail the effects of starvation on the human mind.

A worrying and unsettling read, Hunger remains the best work of fiction ever written about destitution.

I absolutely fell in love with twelve-year-old Bart—a kid who doesn’t complain when there are only pretzel sticks for dinner, who takes boxing lessons, but can’t punch, a kid who loves opera. Opera! (Specifically, the voice of baritone Bryn Terfel--Look him up and listen!) He lives near Oslo, Norway in shabby public housing with his loving, alcoholic, and often unemployed mother. Bart makes the best of everything in his life. His unique, gentle nature, some lovely friendships, and Svingen’s storytelling completely won my heart. I don’t know why this book hasn’t gotten more accolades—maybe because people expect every Norwegian novel to have Vikings and fjords. (Language Alert: There are some instances of the word sh*t—blame the translator).

This manual provides an internationally agreed set of definitions of, and measurements for, different innovative activities and as such provides widely accepted guidelines by which internationally comparative data can be collected and government policies be targeted.

This may seem rather dry, but I think that it is crucial to the development of a subject area that all parties involved are using the same definitions of variables.

This has become of particular importance for many aspects of innovation have become the concerns of politicians and policymakers and past discussions have made me aware that parties more often than would wish are talking at cross purposes, using the same terms for different concepts.

Oslo is a theatrical rendering of the behind-the-scenes negotiations that led to the Oslo Accords in 1993.

This Tony-Award-winning play takes a perhaps unreasonably optimistic view of potential peace. Nor will reading (or better yet, seeing) this play satisfy a serious researcher’s desire for historic detail. But it lays out the emotional stakes with humanity and humor, not qualities one usually dares to associate with the conflict in the Middle East.

I wish I could write like Jo Nesbø. His detective, Harry Hole, faces the worst of the worst sadistic criminals and somehow succeeds, but not always without cost, both to himself and those near to him. In this first Hole story, the Oslo police detective is dispatched to Australia to investigate the murder of a Norwegian citizen. The case is complex, he falls in love, falls off the wagon, and finds suspects who later become victims. Nesbø has a way of keeping you guessing, with plenty of red herrings, a slew of suspects and many grisly deaths along the way. The prose is precise, inventive, compelling. In short, a master at the craft, even in his first story.

I love cold, northern places and dogs, and, if you haven’t already noticed, warts-and-all stories about women finding strength they didn’t know they had in the wilderness. Blair Braverman’s memoir checks all these boxes. As a teenager, she goes to a folk school in the Norwegian Arctic and learns to work with sled dogs, something she later continues as a guide in Alaska. (Braverman is now a professional musher and has run the Iditarod.) The book’s subtitle is Chasing Fear and Finding Home In the Great White North, and Braverman is unsparing in her exploration of fear rooted in both the human and natural world. I read this book on a series of airplanes in one long travel day, and I’m still reminded of it every time I see Braverman’s delightful Twitter stories about her dogs.