Von der Idee zum Verkaufsschlager: John Kåre Raake

I’d lived with my fictional character Anna Aune for a long time, but couldn’t work out where to place her. When the idea of a thriller set in the icy wilderness around the dark, dramatic North Pole took shape, I quickly realised I’d finally found a possible setting for former elite soldier Anna Aune,” says John Kåre Raake, about the origins of what would become The Ice.

But given his background in advertising, and as a scriptwriter for the Norwegian blockbuster disaster movies The Wave and The Quake, the 56-year-old didn’t initially see Anna between the covers of a book. She was supposed to appear on the big screen!

So after doing a bit of research about the North Pole and Arctic conditions, he developed the thriller concept and pitched the idea to a couple of film producers.

“But I didn’t get much of a response. I got the feeling the concept may have fallen between two stools – not to mention the fact that there would be a lot of problems involved in financing this kind of film,” Raake says.

Blockbuster film

And the story of The Ice might easily have ended there – if the disaster movie The Wave hadn’t just premiered and become a blockbuster. Being between two projects, Raake the scriptwriter had a bit of spare time and the opportunity to further develop the story of Anna Aune at the North Pole.

“I’ve always enjoyed writing and after working on film scripts, I had an urge to write something longer. A text where I could free myself from the dialogues that so thoroughly dominate a film script, and where I had the opportunity to develop characters, with room for internal dialogue,” Raake explains.

He was so successful that The Ice didn’t just find a Norwegian publisher but also sparked a bidding war among international publishers when the book was presented at Frankfurt Book Fair last year. Eight German publishers battled for the rights and the winning publisher had to pay a six-figure sum in euros – for a book by a debut author that hadn’t even come out in Norway yet.

Traumatised elite soldier

For those who haven’t read the book,it’s the story of traumatised formerelite soldier Anna Aune, who goes onan expedition to the North Pole byhovercraft with an eccentric 73-yearoldscientist. They plan to documentthe destruction wrought by climatechange as they let themselves driftwith the polar ice, but when a flarelights up the inky sky above the Arcticthey change course and head for theChinese research station, Ice Dragon,where they are met by a terriblesight. Inside the laboratory at thebase, they find frozen bodies, whichseem to suggest that an accident hashappened. But the discovery, in anotherbarracks, of corpses with bulletwounds in their foreheads tells a differentstory. They are dealing with amass murder.

Since they are in the North Pole, they are also dealing with the brutal forces of nature. Hungry polar bears, methane gas explosions, massive shifts in the pack ice, gaping open channels that swallow up life and a bitterly cold winter storm provide a claustrophobic setting for a story that also takes in global politics. We rapidly discover that the Chinese research station does not exist solely for scientific purposes. The superpowers of the US, Russia and China are all seeking to position themselves and shore up their control over the riches that will be on offer once the Arctic becomes milder. And in this battle, loss of human life is of secondary importance.

Face to face with the forces of nature

Raake attributes the book’s strongly action-driven plot to his own background.

“As an adman and scriptwriter, I’ve learnt to tell stories and think in a visual way. I’ve brought this withme into my literary writing. And sinceI like stories with action, what I writeis also affected by that,” Raake says.

“The brutal forces of nature play a major role in The Wave, The Quake and The Ice. Where does this fascination with nature come from?”

“It probably has something to do with my upbringing. I grew up in Skudeneshavn, western Norway, where the nature is dramatic: you live face to face with the forces of nature there, and you really feel how violent nature can be. As we experience more and more extreme weather these days, we’re also increasingly feeling the physical consequences of what we have done to the environment. It’s dramatic for humanity, but for a storyteller, it also offers major opportunities,” Raake answers.

Is it perhaps just the way it’s meant to be – that what started out as a film pitch and became a book will soon most probably become a TV series? For John Kåre Raake, the successes of The Ice have, at any rate, brought him greater freedom and more opportunities.

“My talent is finding stories and I have 20 years’ experience of idea development from advertising. It’s looking pretty certain that there will be more Anna Aune books – the next one in autumn 2020 perhaps? – and I’ll probably continue to work on film and TV series at the same time. But now, more than ever, I’ll be able to assess my ideas and place them where they seem most naturally to belong: between the covers of a book or on the big screen,” John Kåre Raake concludes.

From the Norwegian by Lucy Moffatt.