You have not needed to travel for hours by plane or take a train or a simple taxi.
It only took the writer Jo Nesbø (Oslo, 1960) a few minutes on foot to reach the headquarters of the Centro Andaluz de las Letras, the heart of Malaga, before having a meeting with his readers.
A year and a half ago he acquired a small apartment in the Andalusian city, his new winter refuge.
The Norwegian is not looking for sun and beach, but rather an idyllic corner to frequently practice climbing, his great hobby.
“I have traveled to many countries and for years I have gone to Asia to climb.
Until I found this place, much closer to Oslo, where I can do it in winter,” he explains.
“I go to El Chorro, which is very close and is a beautiful place,” she says.
The gesture is different when she talks about Marbella and the rest of the coast, which she visited one day with little interest: “The whole area is the same and is full of tourists.”
Also about hitmen, drug traffickers and settling scores.
Could Harry Hole be the next destination?
“I think that could happen.
Of course, who knows,” emphasizes someone who is beginning to become interested in drug trafficking in the Strait.
“Maybe I'll take a look at that,” says the person who has just published his latest novel, The House of Night.
This Thursday, hours before his meeting with the local public, Nesbø patiently attends to the photographers.
He does it like he does at home, in a new
Malaguita
version that he shows off smiling and relaxed.
He wears a beret, a plaid shirt, jeans and sunglasses that protect his eyes, which are somewhat sensitive to light these days.
The day starts clear but he soon dresses in an exceptional gray, combining the climate of his native country with that of his host.
The difference is that here the clouds threaten rain but comply with the recent tradition of passing without leaving a drop.
After the photos arrive the cameras of Canal Sur, public television to which the recent winner of the Pepe Carvalho award at the BCNegra festival reports that he wrote his first novel in just five weeks.
It was while he was a rocker.
He got a call on a plane, spent the next 35 days writing 18 hours a day and suddenly became a writer.
He is now the king of crime novels, with more than 55 million books sold worldwide.
What are the keys to that success?
“I have never had a method.
I prefer not to think about that.
I spend too much time writing and I need to have fun, to have that feeling that I'm inventing something new.
If there is a method, I prefer not to know it,” says Nesbø, who, as he says, feels good about changing gears.
That's why she gave Harry Hole a little vacation to launch The Kingdom, whose sequel he is already preparing to publish next fall.
The Norwegian writer Jo Nesbø poses during an interview in Malaga.Daniel Pérez (EFE)
And that is why it even delves into children's literature.
“You have to challenge yourself, push your creativity into areas you haven't been to before, because otherwise you get tired.”
There is no shortage of challenges for someone who trained as an economist, became a professional soccer player and has led a rock group, Di Derre, since the nineties.
And that he has a certain fear of heights even though he loves climbing.
Are you also suspicious of artificial intelligence?
“If it happened to produce better stories, I would welcome it.
I have more interest or curiosity than concern about what may happen to my profession.
People need to know that there is a human being on the other side.
And we like those imperfections that exist when creating,” he explains.
“Until today, artificial intelligence has not been able to replace that human touch,” he insists.
In fact, ICON has conducted the same interview with ChatGPT as with Nesbø: he has only come close to his answers in two of more than 20 questions.
While artificial intelligence dreams of electric sheep, the Norwegian says that his moments of greatest lucidity often occur at that moment when he cannot discern whether he is asleep or awake.
And especially right after a dream.
Then he grabs his cell phone, opens an application and dictates the ideas that have come to his mind without even having to open his eyes to avoid staying awake.
“That state of sleep is one of the most productive moments of the day,” he says.
From there came his latest novel.
In Spanish it is titled
The House of Night
and it is a horror story that, like a Russian katiuska, tells a story wrapped in other stories.
In them there is a house and a night, but also cicadas, telephones that eat people and mysterious characters.
The protagonist is Richard, a boy who balances—like the author himself—on a tightrope that floats between dreams and reality.
There Nesbø reflects, returning to the Greek philosophers.
And to the Matrix.
“When I wake up after a dream, in a way I ask myself: Was that a dream or is it reality and this is a dream?” asks the author, who believes that the way in which one acts in a dream is in in a way something that can be repeated in reality.
“We are capable of the same thing: dreams are a mirror in which to look at ourselves,” adds he, who says that his greatest fear is losing his mind.
“That's where this book starts from.
I am not saying that it will happen nor do I know any history in my family, but that fear has always been there,” he emphasizes.
It is also a fear of the protagonist, who faces—not to give more details and avoid spoilers—a family drama and a trauma that he prefers to forget.
“I think that trying is something that we all already do on a daily basis.
There are many things that we prefer to forget, like the moments in which you have felt ashamed.
In the end those are just the ones you don't forget, but perhaps the interpreters in some new way that allows you to hide them,” he explains.
“Harry is still Harry”
Who is also not very clear about how to face many issues in his life is detective Harry Hole.
He is that addicted, wounded, slightly suicidal and very sagacious police officer who heads the longest series written by Nesbø, with thirteen works in which the agent has been reinventing and surviving himself.
He has gone from being behind the cameras—and accompanying the reader in his work of solving crimes—to standing in front to become the center of attention.
On one side or the other, he is always surrounded by murders, intrigues and mysteries.
“Harry is still Harry,” says the person who took the detective to Los Angeles for a vital detox in the last novel of the saga,
Eclipse
, and does not rule out a future transfer, as he himself has done, to the Coast. del Sol. “Now that I spend time here, I think that could happen.
Of course, who knows,” he comments cautiously.
There would be no shortage of work.
Marbella is the headquarters of operations for dozens of criminal organizations and the nearby Campo de Gibraltar, a tinderbox.
Hitmen, drug traffickers and score settlements are already part of the coastal landscape in this corner of Andalusia.
“But I don't need a realistic context for my stories.
In the entire Harry Hole series, more crimes have been committed in Oslo than have happened in the city during all that time in reality," warns the writer who, yes, shows interest in the bustle of boats loaded with bales between the coasts of Morocco and Spain.
“I saw the
Toy Boy
series and that area interested me.
Maybe take a look at that,” he states.
For now, he says, he has not liked what he has known about the Costa del Sol.
“When I decided to come to Malaga it was to stay in the city and go climbing.
One day I took the car and went to Marbella.
I was in shock.
I had already heard it, but I was surprised by the ghettos where people of the same nationality reside, the large number of tourists.
Everything seems the same, it's a little scary.
“I prefer to live in the city,” says Nesbø, who escapes whenever she can to go climbing on the routes available in El Chorro—near the Caminito del Rey—or the limestone mountains of Villanueva del Rosario.
“I have also gone to see a Málaga CF match, the Copa del Rey match against Real Sociedad.
They have a very good stadium, I will return,” she promises.
Who knows if in the future Harry Hole will wear the blue and white shirt in his investigations.
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