Professor Andersen’s Night
William Leith8 November 2012
Professor Andersen’s Night
by Dag Solstad
(Vintage, £7.99)
It’s Christmas Eve, and Professor Andersen, a Norwegian academic, is lonely. Should he bother with Christmas at all? He decides that he should. He cooks pork with prunes, and then drinks beer and aquavit, at the same time everybody else traditionally does these things. He decides not to have any cake. Looking out of his window into another apartment, Rear Window-style, he spots a beautiful woman. Then he spots something else — a pair of hands around the woman’s neck, strangling her. But he can’t bring himself to call the police. He feels stuck, trapped into silence. But by what? Superb.
