They Call Me the Wolf
By Zeshan Shakar
Aren’t they supposed to have more, I remember thinking. They were from here after all, Norwegian-Norwegians – shouldn’t they own stuff? All the stuff I saw other people’s parents…
Description
Aren’t they supposed to have more, I remember thinking. They were from here after all, Norwegian-Norwegians – shouldn’t they own stuff? All the stuff I saw other people’s parents and grandparents owning. Shouldn’t they have the same stuff? Not even a cabin? At least one without any electricity or water in a place where no one else wants a cabin, like in the middle of the woods in Øvre Romerike. They didn’t even have that. I asked my mother about it. She looked annoyed. All she said was, ‘That’s just how it turned out.’
A man is visiting his father, who is moving to Pakistan. His father doesn’t want to grow old in Norway and his small apartment needs to be emptied.
Praise
Outstanding storyteller!
Guri Hjeltnes, VGZeshan Shakar outdoes himself with “They Call Me the Wolf”. … Shakar captures a high-definition and updated image of Norway as a class-based society, full of revealing details. The upwardly-mobile narrator masters several linguistic registers and need-driven code-switching. Whereas an author like Kjartan Fløgstad prioritizes class over identity in his social analysis, Shakar is interested in the connection between the two: migrant workers were immigrants, and also industrial laborers. And the mother’s family are poor workers from Finnmark [in Northern Norway] with an unknown number of Kven branches in their family tree. Here, minorities are nothing new. “They Call Me the Wolf” is a well-chosen title: The novel thrums with the protagonist’s restless, existentially lonely unease as he roams suburbia for an evening and tries to gain a better understanding of his father. There was always distance, absence. At first because his father had to work so much, then because his marriage fell apart and he moved out. To his son he has passed on small fragments of language, culture and religion from Pakistan, but no more. In this exploration of their relationship, the novel isn’t just interesting, but also deeply moving.
Leif Bull, Dagens NæringslivZeshan Shakar tells a simple story about two parents on the bottom rung. Not an eye will stay dry this time either. […] his eye for the representative is typical of the sociology-educated Shakar. He has this in common with this year’s Nobel Prize winner for Literature, Annie Ernaux. Both write protagonists who are social climbers, who abandon their class, also geographically, and establish themselves in the middle class — elsewhere in town. Shakar has a narrative voice that is notably modest — just like Ernaux. […] When his father digs out “Outrageous (!) Hit Collection - Biggest Hits from Top Films” from the glove compartment, our old stories about how the world is put together begin to fall apart. (The very purpose of literature.) There is not the same level of need for our fixed perceptions. The path to tearfulness is shorter. Zeshan Shakar has only written three novels, but he has already achieved a lot. There is something inclusive, even a fondness for people, in his books. Your blood flows more freely through your veins. “They Call Me the Wolf” is a literary bypass surgery that will bring to joy many.
