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Roman
Publisher:
October
Release year:
2022
«Oops with rage»
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“It’s a metamorphosis. She’s becoming me. And after she becomes me, she dies. We let go of each other “, she writes. In Nedrejord’s previous novel, «Forvandlinga» from 2018, this rape and its crippling consequences are described in all their horror. It is almost unbearable reading; the book should have been forced evening reading for anyone serving a rape sentence.
The new novel is just as intensely painful and clearly demonstrates the long-term, and in many cases almost disabling, power of the trauma. Here the I-person tries to write the trauma of himself, by writing about “he”, ie the rapist. It should prove to be a difficult task. In her attempts to read up on the mentality of violent criminals, in the newspapers’ crime reports, in novels, in documentary literature and films, she makes interesting reflections on today’s views on the division of roles between victim and abuser. What stories are relevant today?
Metaroman
In this way, “Criminal and Punishment” also becomes a meta-novel, a discussion of what words and images authors, judges, journalists and other suppliers of premises use in the presentation of abuse. Is the role of victim becoming more and more evenly distributed between the abuser and the victim? Does trying to redistribute guilt between the victim and the criminal make literature better? Are gray areas becoming more artistically interesting?
– Grew up as a loser
“I miss someone calling a villain a villain,” writes a furious I-person. For occasional deep dives into published material on crime, she walks around in her own experience of investigation, police interrogation, doctor visits, witness confrontations and preparations for the criminal case. Her wanted rapist was arrested after a year and a half, identified by DNA and remanded in custody. Now she knows his name, a few details about his background and has identified him to the police. He is in his 40s, homeless and unemployed. He denies any involvement in the rape. Do not remember, were dritings and would never do such a thing to a woman.
The fear of death
Kathrine Nedrejord does not leave readers in doubt for a moment about what state of mind the book’s I-person is in. She rages, she hates, she walks around in the “gray, rusty, polluted Paris” and vibrates with despair and bitterness. It’s almost a struggle to read. But sometimes you are confronted with what lies beneath the rage – namely the ubiquitous fear that the rapist has inflicted on her: “It is the fear of death, not his fucking cock that bothers me”, she writes.
Shockingly beautiful and perverse
There is no doubt that this author has a conscious and sophisticated relationship with language in all formats. When she describes the wording in an indictment, she writes that the system “takes on linguistic plastic gloves”. Her own language, radical book language, oozes temper, but also a pent-up rage that seeps between the lines. It is admirably accomplished.
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