AshehougAgency

The Strange City

In the novel THE STRANGE CITY Lars Amund Vaage draws a portrait of the controversial psychologist Wilhelm Reich. The narrator’s voice is close to Reich himself, and Vaage shows us the universal as well as the unique about this complex and fascinating man. The main part of the novel takes place in Norway during the first part of Reich’s stay in 1934. Here his friendship with Sigurd Hoel is depicted, as well as cooperation and conflicts with other central people from the Norwegian cultural scene. The novel also offers glimpses into Reich’s childhood and in Bukovina, his time as a student in Vienna and his relationship to Freud.

“Yes. Yes, I like THE STRANGE CITY … I don’t know Wilhelm Reich. He is a name, a familiar name, which turns up again and again. Therefore I’m curious. And I am captivated by Lars Amund Vaage’s portrait of this man … THE STRANGE CITY chases me away and pulls me back. I circle the book. I read, get up from my chair, do something else and is forced back, not only because this has to be written , but because the text haunts me, refuses to let me go, and I like that.”
(Vinduet)

First published: 1999, Forlaget Oktober
Lars Amund Vaage: Biography and bibliography