In the Summer 2016 issue of The Paris Review, Dag Solstad is asked about the line he wrote: “Since my father died, I have not been myself. I have been the writer Dag Solstad.”

“I had strong doubts about publishing that passage. Is it a little too grand, a little too clever? Is it a statement I can stand by? But I decided I had to leave it in. Is it true? Well, it’s there. That’s really all I can say. It’s there and it’s meant to be there.”

Dag Solstad has been called the Philip Roth of Scandinavian literature. His father died when he was eleven.