Jo Nesbø was born in 1960 in the capital of Norway, Oslo. He graduated from the Norwegian School of Economics with a degree in economics. Nesbø has also worked as a freelance journalist and a stockbroker.

His bestselling crime series featuring Detective Harry Hole is a great success, winning many prizes including the Glass Key, the Riverton Prize and the Norwegian Bookclub prize for best ever Norwegian crime novel. He was also shortlisted for the CWA Duncan Lawrie International Dagger for The Redbreast.

After the success of his first novel, Nesbø devoted his time to writing and to his other passion: music. He is the main vocal and songwriter for the popular Norweigan rock band ‘di Derre’.

Jo Nesbø currently lives in Oslo.



What were your favourite books as a child? Were your parents keen readers?

I come from a reading, story-telling family. My mother was a librarian and my father used to spend every afternoon reading in the sitting room. He told stories too, long, familiar narratives told so well that we wanted to hear them again and again. The first novel my father read to me was Lord of the Flies, by William Golding. My father wasn’t too sure if the Nobel Prize-winning author was suitable for a boy aged just seven, but I insisted. Why? Because of the cover: a blood-dripping pig’s head on a stake . . .

Did you always want to be a writer when you were younger?

Yes, I guess I did. As I listened to my father read, I knew I wanted to try and write myself. I was already impressing kids my own age, even slightly older ones, with my gruesome ghost stories.

A lot of my literature-loving, bohemian (in their own eyes at least) friends started writing the great European novel at the age of 17. Or at least they started talking about it. I didn’t say much, and waited till I was 37.

In the past you have been a musician, songwriter and economist: which was your favourite job?

I still play gigs, and occasionally write and record songs. I love performing almost as much as writing, actually I hardly think of it as work. As Bruce Springsteen sings: ‘Been paid a king’s ransom for doin’ what comes naturally.’ Working as an economist was . . . well, work. Overpaid work, but work. My favourite previous job was as a taxi driver, I guess I like observing people.

Do you write full-time and do you have a routine when writing?

I definitely write as much as possible. Everywhere and all the time. When I don’t write, I play. I play about a hundred gigs a year. The flexible nature of my work allows me to travel extensively throughout the year, which is something I enjoy. My longer journeys often take me to South America, Asia and Australia; every year, I spend two to three months in Thailand together with my laptop, thinking up new ideas for forthcoming projects and working on novels already planned.

Who (or what) inspired you to create the character of Harry Hole?

It was so many things. A friend; a drunkard I often drove around when I was working as a taxi driver in my small home town; myself; and other characters from fiction.

You’ve said before that you thought up the plot of your first novel on the flight from Oslo to Sydney: how long did it take you to plan and to write The Redbreast?

Two years. It was a big project, much bigger than my first two novels. I probably spent a year on research, not so much the historical and technical facts as interviewing people, having them tell me what it was like being a non-German volunteer for Hitler in the trenches outside Leningrad.

If writing the first two books was like playing solo guitar, this was like directing an orchestra.

The Redbreast explores Norwegian involvement in the Second World War: what made you want to write about this topic?

My family was involved in the war on both sides. At the age of eighteen my father volunteered to fight against Lenin on the Eastern front, while my mother and her family were in the resistance movement. In school and in the media we had always been told about brave Norwegians standing up against Hitler. My parents’ stories didn’t match this version. Neither did the facts.

Is any of the book based on your parents’ experiences?

The novel is inspired by the stories my father used to tell me from when he fought with the Germans at the Russian front, during the siege of Leningrad. He was injured by a hand grenade and stayed at a military hospital in Vienna, where he fell in love with one of the nurses. When he received orders from Heinrich Himmler (himself!) to go to Stalingrad and join the Wehrmacht, he and the nurse then planned to escape to Paris.

I have used some of his stories, such as the one from New Year’s Eve when my father and his best friend were having a conversation about food and his friend was shot in the head by a sniper; my father then had to dissemble and clean the machine gun and scrape off his friend’s remains, which had frozen to the metal because it was twenty-five degrees below zero.

What can your readers expect for Harry in the future?

Suspense