Should an author lie to make sentimental (or Politically Correct) readers happy?

Good if not great literary fiction is all about presenting societies and individuals as they really are and not as they should be.

Realistic literature or "naturalism" began with great authors like Gustave Flaubert, Stendahl, Émile Zola, Ivan Turgenev, Jane Austen, and the Brontë Sisters. Charles Dickens accelerated the concept with his unvarnished and unsentimental depictions of brutish British society in Victorian times.

Imagine how ridiculous David Copperfield and Oliver Twist would read if Charles Dickens altered entire scenes so as not to offend the delicate sensibilities of the Establishment and those who wanted to pretend that debtor prisons, child labor and exploitation, and domestic violence did not exist along with overwhelming urban poverty and crime-ridden slums.

Imagine what sentimental whitewashed hogwash Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird would read like if she did not mention the segregated and ultra-racist Deep South of her childhood and its grotesque criminal justice system that often turned into lynch mobs.

I should be applauded for my truthful portrayal in Sohlberg and the Gift of the highly dysfunctional Norwegian society that led to the massacre of 77 innocents by anti-immigration murderer Anders Behring Breivik. Instead my proverbial cast pearl landed in a couple of muddied minds of the unthinking knee-jerk Politically Correct.

I'm writing this article because my publisher has received a coordinated campaign of repetitive "blank form" complaints from "readers" who forget that I only report what I see and hear in Norway on the backlash against immigrants and multiculturalism and how these two "social institutions" are now widely recognized across Europe as failed experiments. They attack me the messenger because they are in denial that Norway is not one happy racially-integrated socialist utopia.

The maligning complainants ignore the FACT that Oslo has a crime rate hundreds of times greater than New York City and that most crime comes from immigrants. They ignore Europe's and Norway's well-documented honor killings and genital mutilation of Muslim women by their own radicalized and backward men.

Should I please sentimental and Politically Correct readers who are angry that the messenger reports the truth? Should my books lie and paint Norway as a happy racially integrated family? Did William Faulkner and Harper Lee and Mark Twain paint the Deep South as some idyllic plantation for all whites and all blacks?

Should Cormac McCarthy in the Border Trilogy (All the Pretty Horses, etc.) paint Mexico as a happy and sleepy good-natured Fiesta-land of three amigos? Should his Blood Meridian or The Road masterpieces read like Little House on the Prairie or Wizard of Oz?

Good if not great literary fiction must reflect the times we live in. For example, that's why I recently finished reading (and loved) The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Pakistani author Mohsin Hamid. He perfectly describes the inner turmoil of a Western-educated and Americanized Pakistani immigrant after 9/11. His mild character seethes inside with rage at his adopted USA for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Should Mr. Hamid not write a truthful account of what Americanized Pakistani Muslims feel against the USA or would that destroy the "hands across the world" fantasy of the Politically Correct crowd?

It's a sad reflection on modern Western society that any author's honest and unvarnished portrayal of any society is instantly mob attacked by lemming-like slogan-repeating robots because reality does not fit the one-size-must-fit-all Fantasy Island society of the Very Politically Correct.

New book on betrayal: Sohlberg and the Gift ... (in the shadow of Anders Behring Breivik)

My new book Sohlberg and the Gift on Amazon is all about betrayal.

If you've been betrayed by loved ones, friends, co-workers, your government, politicians, or others, then you know what dirty deeds go on before, during, and after the backstabbing. Also, the book does not shy away from exposing the underside of Norwegian society:

• how judges, prosecutors, and defense lawyers blatantly manipulate insanity defenses in criminal cases (shades of Anders Behring Breivik who killed 77 in his 2011 anti-immigrant terror spree);

• rampant crime in Oslo; and,

• the failed social experiment of multi-culturalism, which brought radical Islam to Norway.

It's a sad truth but mainstream Norwegian newspapers (such as Dagbladet and Aftenposten) have finally reported that Norway's capital---Oslo---has a 400% greater crime rate than New York City and that the primary culprits are the immigrants which Norway's governments brought in to promote the social experiment of multi-culturalism. See, e.g. the Dagbladet newspaper article at tinyurl.com/OSLOcrime.

New publishing partner brings new and far better translation of Sohlberg and the Missing Schoolboy

Sohlberg and the Missing Schoolboy is the 2012 release of a vibrant new translation of Death on Pilot Hill along with added material I wrote to update the book.

My publisher is now working with Vik Crime/Blue Salamander/White Salmon, its new partner in the U.S.A.

Vik Crime/Blue Salamander has an excellent translation and editorial staff that worked hard on "Death on Pilot Hill". The improved book has now been released as "Sohlberg and the Missing Schoolboy".

The new translations are excellent and include material I added to update the book.

New release of Sohlberg and the Missing Schoolboy

Sohlberg and the Missing Schoolboy has just been released on Amazon

THANK YOU to all my readers for keeping the book in the Top 50 best selling police procedurals on Amazon!

Rules of translation

Rule # 1 about translation of a novel: don't assume that big publishing houses have the best or most perfect translations.

This rule came to mind when I spent the weekend reading THE SNOWMAN by my contemporary Jo Nesbø.

The translation refers to cell phones as "mobile phones". While that is a proper translation in England and Europe, it's not part of the general public's lexicon in the U.S. market.

There's also a section in Chapter 6 about Harry Hole running or jogging near the Ekeberg restaurant. The translation by Random House states that the restaurant has aged into a "peeling shack".

At first I thought it was a strip bar. Then I thought the phrase made reference to some sort of hunting or fishing shack. Finally I wondered if it was an oblique reference to a "love shack" where lovers stripped to consummate their passions. A friend later told me that "peeling shack" just refers to the peeling paint or a building's heavily weathered exterior.

Don't get me wrong. Don Bartlett does 100% superb translations. But he is British and not from the bigger U.S. market. Random House should at least pay for him to spend several months living in 5 or 6 major American cities (NY, LA, Houston, Chicago, Miami, Atlanta) to get a feeling for general American word usage.