The Unworthy review: A story of boy criminals in Nazi-occupied Norway told with convincing verisimilitude

The Nazi occupiers are felt more than seen, a shadow on the land, another layer of authority around which to manoeuvre. The disappearance of their Jewish acquaintances; the fear of Olav’s father Arne, nicknamed “Not-a Jew”, that he might be thus mistaken: these – to the boys – curious or comical facts represent the extent to which the Germans impinge upon their lives.

This will change, so gradually that the boys themselves barely understand why or how they move from the mass of the population that, while not collaborating, “ducks the neck” beneath the invader, to the minority that resists it.

As with so much else in their lives, it is a status they inherit, with no clear understanding of their own motives beyond the growing sense that here is an enemy to be actively sabotaged rather than dodged. Their criminal careers – which, like those of so many petty delinquents, will slowly become both serious and deadly – dovetail with their resistance; neither they nor the reader can ever be quite sure which is which.
Jacobsen does not glorify nor damn his characters, all of whom, major and minor, shabby or grasping or altruistic or sometimes all three, feel authentically human, never ciphers to carry an idea. This, along with his scrupulous refusal to admit the future into their continuous present, makes for a book whose exacting worm’s-eye verisimilitude is altogether convincing.

The Unworthy by Roy Jacobesen
Trans by Don Bartlett and Don Shaw
Maclehose Press