One February day in 1970, the 28 year old writer Arild Asnes returns to his native Norway after spending time in Spain. Arild Asnes is an independent socialist but is convinced that Norway has become “an unusually repulsive country”, and disgusted with life in one of the world’s freest nations, where any form of rebellion is impossible. This inner conflict leads him into an existential, artistic and political crisis, and full of doubt and ambivalence he seeks a new language as well as a new political platform.

One of the most controversial Norwegian novels of the post-war era, Arild Asnes, 1970 provoked a long, heated debate in Norwegian media after its publication in 1971 and killed the myth that said that a political novel can’t have literary value.