There’s a kind of end-of-the-world scent to the five short stories that Jo Nesbø offers to anchor the sticky summer that awaits us. In most of them, life as we know it has collapsed, blown away by a deadly virus that has literally ended the modern world — does that ring a bell? Aside from a few zillionaires who had anticipated this, humans are surviving very poorly in this “after” that smells bad against a backdrop of acrid smoke.
In “Rat Island,” the 150-plus-page tale that gives the collection its title, gangs control what’s left of a town near the coast of a once-prosperous country of which nothing more is known. Everything has fallen apart; governments, police, and military have almost everywhere thrown in the towel after organized gangs seized the weapons and ammunition supplies. The few survivors hide in the ruins, or, like local tycoon Colin Lowe, in the former Rat Island prison converted into a fortress. But when his daughter is murdered and his wife raped, an upright man, a lawyer named Will Adams, captures the culprit, Lowe’s son, and promises to obtain legal justice. It is in his plan that the interest of the story lies. Beyond the horror, it questions human responsibility and dignity… and the finale will leave you speechless.
Elsewhere, as if Nesbø’s elegant writing first underlined the dark side of all contrasts, the observation is everywhere distressing. His portrait of what makes humans specific when left to their own devices makes one shudder with its unbearable accuracy. Except when, even in the worst extremes, moral and philosophical concerns arise in certain characters that instill a certain hope. This is the case in “The Shredder” when a researcher finally destroys the fruit of his work because he understands that his “longevity medicine” would only make an already deplorable situation worse. Similarly, “The Black Rider” inscribes a note of hope, even if fragile, in a cruel and devastated world where the law of the strongest prevails.
The other two short stories, equally dark and relentless, stand out for their context. The longest, “The Cicadas”, which is over a hundred pages long, is set in the heart of the Basque Country, first in San Sebastián, then in Pamplona for the famous running of the bulls. It is a sort of fable about time and parallel worlds as much as about the strength of the bonds of friendship. Here too, a thread of hope gives the story all its ambiguity. As for “The Antidote”, we find a detestable character who will go to the end of his arrogance, whatever it implies… and who will pay the price.
Ultimately, one can only admire the richness of the universes and the relevance of the reflection deployed here by an author in full possession of his means.