Stig Sæterbakken

Stig Sæterbakken (born 1966) is a Norwegian author. He published his first book already at the age of 18, a collection of poems called Floating umbrellas, while still attending Lillehammer Senior High School. In the years to follow, he published yet another collection of poems, The sword became a child (1986), and a collection of stories, Wanderer's book (1988).

In 1991, Sæterbakken released his first novel, Incubus, followed by The new testament in 1993, a novel that whipped up a storm amongst many Norwegian critics, due to its controversial subject, the post-war democratic Europe's use of Adolf Hitler and nazism as symbols of ultimate evil. The mix up of historical facts and fiction, mirroring the book's main theme, the quest for the secret diaries of Hitler, was also resented by many critics.

Aestethic bliss (1994) summened up five years' work as an essayist. The book presented both previously published and new essays on a variety of subjects, such as Anthony Burgess' A clockwork orange, Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy, Witold Gombrowicz' Ferdydurke, Julio Cortázar's Hopscotch, Octave Mirbeau's The torture garden, Lars von Trier's Europe-trilogy and Robert Harmon's action-thriller The hitcher, the works of artists Per Inge Bjoerlo and Jeff Koons, in addition to a correspondence with Jan Kjærstad on Bret Easton Ellis' American Psycho.

After some difficult years, Sæterbakken returned to prose in 1997 with the novel Siamese, which marks a significant break in his authorship. The book was a surprise to many people, with its simple crude style. 1998 saw the release of Self-control. And in 1999 came Sauermugg. The three books, or the S-trilogy, as they are often called, were published in a collected edition, summer 2000.

Fall 2000 saw the release of a book which was a result of many years' work, a new translation of a selection of short-stories by Edgar Allan Poe, combined with comprehensive notes and an afterword where Poe's position is discussed, both in his own times and in the present day. The man of the crowd and other short-stories (Bokvennen Forlag) was met with enthusiasm, and Sæterbakken was praised for his dedicated norwegianizing of Poe's advanced and radical prose.

In February 2001, Sæterbakken's second collection of essays, The evil eye was released. As with Aestethic bliss in 1994, this book also represents a summing up and a closing of a new phase in the authorship. In many ways the essays throw light on Sæterbakken's own prose over the last years, the S-trilogy in particular. The evil eye consists mainly of individual texts on literary works and writers, such as Faulkner, Beckett, Strindberg, Poe, Kierkegaard, Ján Ondrus and Emmanuel Bove. But here is also an essay on Peter Handke's disputed agitation for the serbs in the Balkan-conflict, and a long reflection on Adolf Hitler's role as a symbol of evil, as a cultural travesty in post-war democratic Europe. A joint theme for all the essays is what one could term "the problem of evil". The writer insists on art and literature as a field where common moral rules are not in force, a place where both the writer and the reader can explore the outer limits of human experience without the bonds and obligations that usually keeps us restrained.

Sæterbakkens latest books are the novels Capital, The visit and Invisible hands. For The visit, he was awarded Osloprisen (The Oslo-prize) 2006.