So you don’t consider yourself an outlier of this genre? The “mystery” is revealed very much at the beginning-the important question is what the characters are going to do with their knowledge. I don’t consider The Dinner a mystery novel in the strict sense of the word. Do you think we are about to be inundated with thrillers from the Netherlands?
Even if we don’t act according to this behavior, we might secretly fantasize that we would like to do so.įor the past several years, American readers have been captivated by mystery and suspense fiction from Scandinavian countries. I was trying to let extreme behavior look almost like “normal,” in the sense that we might question ourselves how extreme or violent we really are deep down inside. There is some real appeal here, something that everybody (but mostly young people) tries to imitate.ĭo you really believe in the extreme behavior exhibited by your characters, or are you taking things to extremes in order to question normative values we might otherwise take for granted? In the Netherlands, and most of Europe I think, American culture is present everywhere (already from the 1950s up till now). It certainly is not a bid to please the American market. Is American pop culture so ubiquitous, or is this a conscious bid to appeal to the American market? There are many references to American pop culture in your novel. They were filmed by the CCTV cameras, and they looked such nice boys! They could have been anybody’s son. How did you come up with the idea for this novel?įirst, I saw a real event on television: two boys molesting a homeless person at a cash machine in Barcelona. Dutch author Herman Koch’s novel, The Dinner, is a psychological thriller about a five-course restaurant meal that goes terribly awry the narrative constantly forces the reader to revise his or her understanding of what is actually happening.
0 kommentar(er)
