A young imperialist adventurer turned hero of the anti-Nazi resistance, Norwegian journalist, poet, and playwright Nordahl Grieg has become more of a national legend than a real person since his death as a war reporter in Berlin in 1943. A look into Grieg’s intellectual development during the dynamic interwar period sheds light on the political and cultural ideologies that competed in a turbulent Europe. Often portrayed with an emphasis on his humanist and pacifist positions, this antifascist figure becomes more complex in his writings, which reveal shifting allegiances, including an unsavory period as a rigid Stalinist.
 
In this comprehensive and accessible book, Dean Krouk examines a significant public figure in Scandinavian literature and a critical period in modern European history through original readings of the political, ethical, and gender issues in Grieg’s works. This volume offers a first-rate analysis of the interwar period’s political and cultural agendas in Scandinavia and Europe leading to the Second World War by examining the rise of fascism, communism, and antifascism. Grieg’s poetry found renewed resonance in Norway following the 2011 far-right domestic terrorist attacks, making insight into his contradictory ideas more crucial than ever. Krouk’s presentation of Grieg’s unexpected ideological tensions will be thought-provoking for many readers in the United States and elsewhere.

My Father’s War is simultaneously a history of the Nazi occupation of Norway in World War II and a son’s sincere attempt to understand the silences, motivations, and experiences of an estranged father. In this carefully researched book, combining family memoir and historical retelling, Bjørn Westlie uncovers his father’s actions as a volunteer soldier for the Waffen-SS, the military wing of the infamous Schutzstaffel (SS), in the invasion of the Soviet Union. Balancing his role as both son and critical investigator, Westlie unflinchingly interrogates his father’s fascist convictions, which speak to the appeal Hitler’s ideology held for a small, disgraced segment of Norway’s mid-century population. A story of collaboration, tragedy, and treason, My Father’s War reveals the little-known history of Norway's frontkjempere (front fighters), the atrocities the Waffen-SS committed against Ukrainian Jews, and the complex legacies of ethnonationalism in Norway. 

With an insightful introduction from translator Dean Krouk, My Father’s War is a contemporary classic of war literature. Committed to genuine understanding without falling into undue sympathizing, this sober and reflective book presents an eye-opening, moving, intense, and necessary account of the allure of fascism in a world at war—and its personal costs.