LitHouse podcast

The first novel of Spanish author Alana Portero propelled her to international fame, with the help of fans such as legendary director Pedro Almodóvar and popstar Dua Lipa.Bad Habit is a dark and poetic coming of age-story, eliciting comparisons to writers such as James Baldwin and Édouard Louis. Set in a Madrid suburb, the poor and religiously conservative San Blas, in which heroin abuse is widespread and violence never far away, the novel follows the trans girl Álex, growing up in a body that feels wrong, and unable to conform to the strict masculine ideals of her surroundings.Portero describes opaque plastic bags of women’s clothing stuffed away in the childhood room, and nightly walks back from Madrid’s clubs, during which all signs of Álex’s womanhood has to be erased before she reaches home. She finally finds her salvation in a number of unforgettable women she meets on her way, women who show her alternative futures, provide friendship and safety to explore who she is and wants to be.Bad Habit is a story about liberation, but also about a working-class childhood in the shadow of Franco’s dictatorship, steeped in strict Catholicism and desperation in the face of non-existing future outlooks. Despite the harsh living conditions, it is also a childhood with room for love, empathy and community.Alana Portero is a writer, a poet, a playwright and director. She is the founder of the stage company STRIGA, and the author of four poetry collections. Bad Habit has been translated into 17 languages.At the House of Literature, Portero was joined by the Norwegian Priya Bains for a conversation about a working-class childhood, gender, identity and sisterhood. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From her sickbed at the nursing home in Warsaw, Stasia tells the story of her almost ninety-year-long colorful life. Without inhibition, she tells her granddaughter Magda juicy anecdotes about falling in love, horniness, drinking, politics, and her eternal struggle against patriarchal attitudes. Both women stand outside the rest of the family – Stasia because she is too much, Magda because she is trans. But they have each other.When Polish author Sylwia Chutnik is translated into Norwegian for the first time, by Julia Wiedlocha, it is to portray a bond between two vastly different women from different generations. The novel Tyłem do kierunku jazdy (Against traffic) sets a clear contrast between the two main characters: Where Stasia is combative, shameless and defiant, Magda is worn out and disillusioned. She dreams of being the life of the party, but in everyday life she tries to avoid too much attention while simultaneously navigating her relationship with the rest of the family, dating and sex, and all the daily challenges that come with living as a trans woman in today's Poland.Sylwia Magdalena Chutnik is a Polish cultural scholar, activist and author. She has published around twenty books in Polish, including children's books, non-fiction, novels, short stories and poetry, and has won numerous awards both as an author and as an activist. Her literature circles around themes such as feminism, queer perspectives, freedom and struggle.Chutnik met the Norwegian author Amalie Kasin Lerstang for a conversation about freedom, feminism and queer lives in Poland. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Few books have faced as much resistance as Gender Queer: A Memoir by Maia Kobabe. The American Library Association reports that Gender Queer was the book they received the most requests to remove from libraries in 2021, 2022, and 2023, and it still ranks third for 2025.In itself, Gender Queer is not a controversial project: the book is a graphic memoir based on Kobabe's upbringing in California, from childhood into early adulthood. Maia, who has no clear concept of eir own gender, is forced into increasingly gendered patterns: at first clothes and toys, then puberty, falling in love, and sexual practice. The story follows Maia on the long search to find emself, in relation to gender expression and sexuality, but also as an adult and as an artist.Gender Queer immediately became a queer classic when it was published in 2019. Kobabe writes honestly and vulnerably about the journey to understanding eir own identity as non-binary and asexual, and has helped an entire generation of young people who are uncertain about their own gender and sexuality feel less alone.Maia Kobabe is an American illustrator, comic artist, and author, and a former librarian. Eir major work Gender Queer has won a long list of awards, and has so far been translated into 16 languages. The book has been challenged and banned from libraries across the US, something Kobabe has met with a simple response: queer youth need queer books. What role do art and literature play for young people’s search for their own identity?Nora Dåsnes is also an author, illustrator, and graphic novelist. She has explored queer identity and love herself, among other things in the comic diary Cross My Heart and Never Lie, which, like Gender Queer, has been awarded the American Stonewall Book Award.She will meet Kobabe for a conversation about identity, censorship, and drawing your own life. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

“I knew that I was a writer, but I had to stop writing like other writers. I had to write like myself.”Elizabeth Strout published her first novel at the age of 43, after years of writing, rewriting, and searching for a voice of her own. Today, she is among the most read contemporary writers in American letters, known for her empathetic, profound portraits of people and small-town worlds that stay with the reader and won’t let go. Olive Kitteridge and Lucy Barton are characters embraced by readers and critics across the world. This year saw the publication of Strout’s new novel, The Things We Never Say, about yet another everyday hero: the middle-aged history teacher Artie Dam.“Every single word matters,” Strout said when she last visited the House of Literature. How does she find the right words, in the voice that is so unmistakably her own? What writers have shaped her along the way, and where does she look for inspiration?Returning to the House of Literature for an evening about her writing life, Strout will talk about how she creates her memorable characters, the importance of observation, and how she works to bring out the extraordinary in ordinary people’s lives.On stage, Strout was joined by writer and literary scholar Kristina Leganger Iversen for a conversation about reading, writing and literary courage. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Ever since her debut in 1998, American Elizabeth Strout’s literary characters have charmed readers and critics across the world. The headstrong, unpredictable Olive Kitteridge gave Strout the Pulitzer Prize, and was adapted into an award-winning TV series, and the novels about the writer Lucy Barton, who grew up in poor and dysfunctional surroundings on the Illinois countryside, have been embraced by readers. All her books are translated into Norwegian by Hilde Rød-Larsen.In Strout’s new novel, The Things We Never Say, we meet Artie Dam – a middle-aged and respected history teacher in Massachusetts, a very ordinary man. He is the kind of person that keeps the community together, always with a kind word to the students who need it the most. But Artie feels a growing sense of loneliness and alienation, and a secret revealed makes him question even those closest to him, and what he really knows about the people in his life.This is a novel about our ability to speak truthfully to each other, and about the things we never talk about. The story is set in 2024, when Donald Trump is reelected, and Strout shows how the country’s growing polarization is lodged into the local communities, into people’s bodies, marriages, families, friendships, and into conversations in which so many things no longer can be said.It is in the quiet, everyday life that the big dramas play out in Strout’s universe. With warmth, precision and depth, she portrays the inner landscapes of ordinary people’s lives, always with a keen eye for how class conflicts and political unrest seep in and take root in them.Strout ass joined by writer Marie Aubert for a conversation at Det Norske Teatret’s main stage, about the big dramas in everyday life, about truth, solidarity, and the things we never say. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

For Cal, it is a defeat to be forced to leave the big city of Edinburgh for his childhood home in the tiny island Isle of Harris. Not only has he failed to get a job despite his expensive education, even worse is having to leave the freedom of the city, where he could live out his attraction to men, something that is unthinkable at home, a place where everybody knows everybody, and his father is leading the psalms in the strict, puritan congregation.In Scottish Douglas Stuart’s new novel John of John, we meet a father and a son, and a windswept and depopulated island community. Here, the men are in charge, of the sheep farming, of the congregation and of keeping the traditional tweed weaving alive. Cal doesn’t fit into the tight mold, but is toon becomes clear that his father too, has his own secrets, about why his wife left him when Call was little, and about the real owner of their farm. Stuart’s story illuminates the islanders’ community and bigotry, their vast elbow room and their confinement.In just a few years, Douglas Stuart has established himself as one of our time’s leading chroniclers of poverty, marginalization, and queer experience. His debut novel Shuggie Bain won the prestigious Booker Prize, and his second book Young Mungo was also embraced by critics and readers alike.At the House of Literature, Stuart was joined by writer and Professor of literature Janne Stigen Drangsholt for a conversation about love and loneliness, shame and small-town moral guardians. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In conversation with Tove Gravdal about Roosevelt’s right hand, history’s middlemen and the role of diplomacy today.From Epstein files to the US and Israel’s bombing of Iran: The events of the last few months have highlighted the importance – and shortcomings – of international cooperation and diplomacy.Norway’s foreign secretary, Espen Barth Eide, is one of many who suddenly have to navigate uncharted waters. Through his many years in the service of Norwegian foreign policy, he has worked to increase dialogue and alliances between countries and people. Now, it seems someone has tossed the rule book, making small states like Norway all the more vulnerable in the face of brazen superpowers.Our current situation was far from the mind of internationally acclaimed Dutch historian Geert Mak when he set out to write about the role of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s now all but forgotten right hand. But in the process, the many parallels between the time he wrote about – the prelude to the second world war, the Spanish civil war and the rise of fascism – and our own times became increasingly apparent.In The Switchman, Mak show how the social worker Harry Hopkins, who became Roosevelt’s right hand, laid the foundation for the modern welfare state and forged a crucial alliance between the US and Europe in a time when fascism was on the rise. What can Hopkins’s story tell us about the value of middlemen, mediators and diplomats – in a time when the transatlantic alliance is threatened both from the outside and within, and when many of us have lost faith in the world of diplomacy?With titles such as The Lives of Jan Six and In Europe. Travels through the Twentieth Century, Mak has established himself as a central chronicler of modern European and American history. Barth Eide spent time as a researcher in the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs, and in central positions within the UN and the World Economic Forum besides his many years in Norwegian politics.In June 2026, Barth Eide joined Mak for a conversation about Hopkins and the role of diplomacy today, moderated by writer and journalist Tove Gravdal. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Wergeland Lecture 2026Andrey Kurkov is one of Ukraine’s most central cultural and literary ambassadors. With titles such as Death and the Penguin and Grey Bees, he has gained readers across the world. But when Russia’s full scale invasion of Ukraine began in 2022, he was no longer able to write fiction. Instead, he has travelled widely to talk about the reality and brutality of the war, writing essays and a journal from his daily life in the war. Already in 2022, he published Diary Of An Invasion.Growing up during the Soviet era, Kurkov discovered writers such as George Orwell and Aleksandr Solzjenitsyn through illegal copies. He has experienced first hand what a society without freedom of speech really entails, as well as the role of language and culture in establishing a national identity. Kurkov himself writes in Russian, Ukrainian and English. Part of what Putin is out do destroy is Ukraina as an independent nation, with a culture and a language of its own.In what ways is Putin appropriating history and culture in his narrative about the invasion? And how has the war – ironically – fortified both Ukraine’s and the rest of the world’s view of Ukrainian language and culture?The Wergeland lecture is an annual event. Each year, The House of Literature will invite an international voice who embodies Henrik Wergeland’s spirit in their work and writings. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Oksana Zabuzhko is one of the central writers of Ukraine’s post-Soviet generation. In 1996, she caused great controversy with her debut novel, Field Work in Ukrainian Sex, in which she challenged the current view won women’s role in society and in the relationship, where she was expected to be subordinate to the man.The novel has become a work of reference for Eastern European feminism, and with its exploration of female experience, language and power, it has been compared to writers such as Jamaica Kincaid and Angela Carter.The novel portrays the destructive relationship between the writer Oksana and the sculptor Mykola, as well as the many challenges Oksana faces as a young female, Ukrainian poet. In an immediate and colloquial language, partly addressed to the reader, partly the narrator’s own stream of conciousness, Zabuzhko navigates what it means to be Ukrainian and what it means to be a woman, at a moment in time when both identities were being negotiated.Zabuzhko has published a number of award winning novels, essay collections and books of poetry, including The Museum of Abandoned Secrets and The Longest Journey. She has a PhD in philosophy, and she has taught Ukrainian literature at Harvard and the University of Pittsburgh.Author and historian Lotta Elstad has also explored history and female experience in novels such as Jeg nekter å tenke [«I refuse to think»] and the critically acclaimed Xiania series. She joined Zabuzhko for a conversation about sex, love and the view of women in Ukraine.The conversation was held in English. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Few historians can match the position of British Anthony Beevor. With his 13 historical book son recent European history, he has become one of the most respected and read writers of history. Especially his books about the Second World War, including Stalingrad and The Second World War have become modern classics.In his latest book, Beevor delves into the final days of one of history’s largest empire, the Russian Romanov dynasty. Rasputin and the Downfall of the Romanovs provides a portrait of the «mad monk» Rasputin, and explores how one man seemingly toppled an entire dynasty. Through detailed portraits of the tsar couple, their advisors and the growing revolutionary hunger of the masses, Beevor shows how a combination of political incompetence, religious fanatism and social unrest brought about the catastrophic fall of the dynasty.The Norwegian author Erika Fatland has travelled all across the former Russian empire. In award winning books like Sovietistan and The Border – A Journey Around Russia, she shows how history affects the region today. She joined Beevor for a conversation about Rasputin, the Romanovs and the fall of an empire. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.