(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
Atef Abu Saif:
Under the drones – diary from Gaza
Spartacus, Norway 2018
This diary gives us an author's insight into the 51 days-long war on the Gaza Strip back in 2014. As the rocket fire lights up the sky outside, Saif sits in Jabalia's apartment writing, close to the tragedy that is taking place. Saif has authored several books and teaches political science at Al-Azhar University in Gaza. Many-year-old NRK correspondent in the Middle East, Odd Karsten Tveit, has written the foreword to the Norwegian translation. He was working for NRK during the war, the war that Israel called a major military operation and named it "Protective Edge". The journal was first published in 2015, and has received a number of good international criticisms. The author was born in the Jabalia refugee camp and has remained in his hometown. Saif wrote the diary at risk of losing his life, Tveit writes in the introduction, and Tveit tells of that morning when he himself came to Gaza. Then Saif had written for eighteen days: "This Thursday morning he had been through another night in fear of being bombed or getting a text message: Death will come in sixty seconds if you do not leave the house."
Kim Søderstrøm:
Veteran – Norwegian soldiers in foreign service tell
Kagge Forlag, Norway
Veteran Kim Søderstrøm has for several years collected stories from Norwegian soldiers who have been stationed abroad. The book opens with a foreword by the President of the Norwegian Red Cross, Robert Mood. Then follows an introduction by Søderstrøm even before the book continues with an interview with Kåre Willoch on the German brigade. Since World War II, well over a hundred thousand Norwegians have participated in international operations with the Armed Forces. They have been posted to Korea, Gaza, Congo, Lebanon, Iraq, Kosovo and Afghanistan, and others. The book gives a close up of their experiences and experiences of war up to our days. The book is illustrated with portraits in black and white, all taken by Søderstrøm himself.
Alain Corbin:
A History of Silence – From the Renaissance to the Present Day
Polity, England and the United States
The historian and professor at the University of Paris, the Sorbonne, Alain Corbin, takes us back in time with his book about when expression was not only rarer, but was also considered something very valuable. The intention behind the book A History of Silence is that the reader himself should rediscover what the marvelous silence is, – and thus create a richer life. Corbin highlights authors, artists and thinkers who over the centuries have valued silence, and cultivated it, and often sought it out in the mountains or in the woods. There has been noise at all times. The publisher writes that the book is intended to be an invitation to meditation and introspection. In our time, Corbin writes, with today's noise and a bombardment from the media that constantly wants our attention, we do not just lose touch with our own interior. Absence of silence is about to change us fundamentally.
