The play adapted from Carl Reiner’s novel. Later it became a movie, and I think a funny one as I recall.

An odd fish. An Icelandic novel. The narrator, a self-important nobody, of excruciating behaviour, lectures on the Importance of Cod to the development of the superiority of the Scandinavian. They go on some sort of voyage where the First Mate retells the legend of the golden fleece. Small gestures, tiny ironies, occasionally indelicacies, this will delight one in a hundred, but that one will be utterly delighted.

A “new” version by Christopher Hampton, well actually from Broadway in 1972. And yes of course I was just in Norway. They showed me round the National Theatre. Thought it was about time I checked in with old Henrik. His plays of ideas seem more fun that Shaw. Need to check the last line in the old translation. About the little wife, kept in a virtual prison by her condescending husband, and how Nora grew up and learned to love herself.

Two early plays by the Number One.

Found a first edition in Earthling. A weird one, about an ex Nun and an attempt to heist Contra money off a murderous Nicaraguan Colonel. Something of a fairy story set in New Orleans. Not his best, but he is never ever dull. And yes I just checked and found it in my reading diary from May to June in 1999.

A friendly Norwegian journalist brought me this to read. I’m not a great fan of the serial killer genre although I did enjoy the Larsen Trilogy, mainly because of the wonderful eccentricity of the eponymous tattooed lady. This one I was enjoying when the most gruesome and creepy murder of an innocent female turned my stomach and I bailed. I can’t even get into Dexter. I find violence against the female insupportable as entertainment.

I enjoyed Salman’s memoirs of the Fatwah. Ten years of self-imprisonment guarded by Special Branch and abused by British newspapers. It’s a fine and revealing memoir. I think it would be twice as good if it were half as long, but this was the whole experience he went through. I even went to his wedding with Padma Lakshmi. I don’t think any of us expected it to last.