No one ought to come and talk to me about burnout. I mean, is there anything enjoyable about being disabled? To lose your livelihood and be sent on a temporary work placement? The pills brushed away the worst of it, but the aggression gave way to indifference, turned into emptiness. I felt completely numb. I knew what it was like to lie in the cold, hard ground and be nothing. I knew what it being dead felt like.
After Krister Larsen slips a few discs, he’s forced to give up his work as an electrician and is instead sent on a temporary work placement at a community college to teach Norwegian to immigrants. Work felt like being in prison. As if I was merely waiting for my life to begin anew. Krister is married to Marianne, but instead of empathizing with Krister’s situation, her whole attention is fixed on building a pergola in their garden. The problem is that she isn’t intelligent enough to understand how stupid she is. Their eleven-year-old son Andreas is having trouble in school. No wonder he resorts to violence, when violence is the language he was trained in. And then there’s Yvonne. What is there to be said about Yvonne? Krister is intensely attracted to her. That’s the gist of it. Why couldn’t Marianne have been more like Yvonne? Taken care of me, like Yvonne did?
Through scattered fragments, fleeting glimpses and inner ramblings, the contours of a man gradually emerge. What begins as the steady thrum of unexplained anger and resentment, evolves into a portrayal of a life caught between addiction and the slow collapse of a marriage, of a man who suffers the cruel descent into narcissism, while believing the entire world to be against him.
Kyrre Andreassen’s uncompromising novel Furthermore, I Consider That Carthage Must Be Destroyed is a rendition of a man whose righteousness and sense of self begins to fracture. Funny and brutal all at once, with moments of love and tenderness, Andreassen’s writing moves with remarkable ease between the mundane and menacing, with effortless transitions into the darker and irrational sides of human nature.
Extra Materials
Norway, Gyldendal
Author
Reviews
“This is as much a love story as it is a story about a man facing an identity crisis. […] Rarely has a novel given me hope and annoyed me on the very same page. […] Nevertheless, Kyrre Andreassen achieves a rare sense of flow and momentum.”
– Drammens Tidene (NO)
“Those of us who have been waiting for more from Kyrre Andreassen since 2006 have not waited in vain. Furthermore, I Believe Carthage Must Be Destroyed is a true blast to read.”
– NRK (NO)
“There are many ways to assess the significance of a novel, but one way is whether it tells us something new that cannot be conveyed in any other way. And in that regard, Kyrre Andreassen’s novel gets top marks.”
– Dagens Næringsliv (NO)
“A linguistically powerful portrayal of a reflective, raw force of nature.”
– Hamar Arbeiderblad (NO)
“Ten years have passed since Kyrre Andreassen’s last book was published, and he has put that time to good use; his new novel is exceptionally well thought out and written in a style that is at once original, authentic, and consistent, not least when it breaks the rules. […] In short, the novel is impressively good.”
– Dag og Tid (NO)
“Andreassen is masterful in depicting environments; here we encounter suburban Norway with its competitive comparisons of cars, gardens, and material possessions, its lack of interest in politics, its dash of xenophobia and gossip, as well as its everyday happiness and the sacrifices made for the children’s sports and band activities. […] a great deal of humor emerges from what I assume is his characteristic wit.”
– Klassekampen (NO)
“Kyrre Andreassen possesses a linguistic edge and gives voice to men’s discontent.”
– Vårt Land (NO)
“When I read books I really like, I write down sentences from them in a notebook reserved for that purpose. But when reading Furthermore, I Believe Carthage Must Be Destroyed I had to give up on that – I realised I was rewriting the whole book in my notebook. Kyrre Andreassen has written critically acclaimed and bestselling Norwegian books for decades, but I think the world hasn’t discovered him yet. Furthermore, I Believe Carthage Must Be Destroyed is a book about an electrician and his crumbling marriage, and that might not seem funny – but it’s one of the funniest and wisest books I’ve ever read ”
– Ingvild H. Rishøi, author of International bestseller Brightly Shining