For the majority of my adult life I have worked in politics and served four terms as an elected member of parliament – with one term as a minister. I found that I tapped into knowledge that has been compounded over a long period of time – an understanding of budgets, the law-making process, and the main topics of public debate.
Be sure, however, that I gave myself permission to fictionalise events and settings. Some of these were based on ´what if´ scenarios – something had been done that was in reality debated but not realised, for example. I deliberately stayed well away from parliament itself because I had so recently left politics when I wrote the book. I wasn’t ready to go deep into that world in Dead Sweet, but who knows what the future will bring! But what I could use – and did – was what I learned about people.
One of the privileges of having been in politics for this long is how well you get to know society and all of its different aspects. Every day you wake up and hear and read about issues that are affecting the people we serve. And then there were all the people we met – the hundreds, thousands of people, with their stories and their individual concerns, and the dynamics they create in various situations. I watched the people around me – everywhere – to see what was worrying them or bringing them joy; I watched them closely in meetings and in social gatherings. It was my job to understand them in order to do my job.
I started writing based on my interest in people and especially the dynamics of different relationships. Sometimes we ask ourselves if it is possible for someone to be born bad and also what makes even the best of us do the unthinkable. I wondered what a smart psychopath could be doing in the surroundings that I live in – how far could he go and if, and then whom, would be able to stop him (or her!).
I started to create the characters who then ended up in Dead Sweet. I imagined them walking into a room, considering how the energy would shift in their presence, how their voices would sound and how others would react to them. Slowly the story started to come alive. When my government official, Óttar, became more defined, I chose to make him a high-ranking official because I know that environment well. I know the set-up, the dynamics, and what happens on a day-to-day basis.
As the writing progressed I found the need to explore and write more about the relationships and interactions between my characters, between Sigurdís and her family, between brother and sister, mother and son, Sigurdís and her boss – because no relationship is the same and relationships are never black and white. There are layers of the past defining every relationship – a shared past between the people involved and also their own individual experiences. And often the most important things you find is in what is ´not´ said but shown in body language and what ´lies in the air´.
I am often asked if Óttar is based on someone I met during my political years. The answer is simply no, because most of the people I worked with were genuinely trying to do their honest best every day. That’s why I found it fascinating to place him there to see what he could get away with. People do the best and worst things.
Katrín Júlíusdóttir’s Dead Sweet, translated by Quentin Bates, is out today in beautiful hardback.
