Vigdis Hjorth, one of Norway's most famous novelists, is best known for writing about the sexual assault of a child by her father. She's published more than 20 books since the 1980s, a number of which take up the same material'a woman trying to remember something that's too dangerous to remember; a family with a secret. Her writing tends to be classified as virkelighetslitteratur, or 'reality fiction,' and for good reason. Hjorth makes Norway sound like a small town'the sort of place where your neighbors know you're home if they can see your footsteps in the snow'and the overlap between her life and work has more than once been the literary version of tabloid news there. In 2016, she published Will and Testament. The novel was a hit, won the Norwegian Critics Prize for Literature, and made her family furious. Her sister Helga accused Hjorth of using their family members' correspondence in the book; Hjorth said she had permission. Helga then wrote her own novel, about a woman whose...
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