The past is just a dream

The novel by Norwegian writer Axel Sandemuse, “The Past is But a Dream,” is one of the author’s most important works, a story of crime and passion, a penetrating analysis of the irrational forces that govern the human mind.

In a letter to his never-seen son, American-Norwegian businessman John Thorson delves into the depths of his memory and fishs out memories of events that may not have actually happened. In 1939, he arrives in Norway in search of an old love and a lost childhood, finds himself in a whirlpool of dramatic events and witnesses the beginning of the German occupation. In his past, where everything is bizarrely intertwined and where nothing really passes, a mysterious murder and a sense of guilt, bohemian acquaintances and rivalry, searches for morality and identity, seductive passions and irreparable losses arise. Memories do return to us, and with fateful consequences.

“Murder and love are the only things worth writing about,” is the famous phrase of Axel Sandemuse, known for his psychological depth and research into the social influence on personality, formulated here.