“It’s always interesting to see people who are at the breaking point when their life situation becomes critical and see how they react”. Norway’s great Carl Frode Tiller reveals the creative methods behind his award-winning novels. Human existence is at the center of Carl Frode Tiller’s often extensive novels of several hundred pages. When depicting a character, Tiller finds it most interesting when the person is at a breaking point. “In those situations, you show new sides of yourself, or you show who you really are or that you’re on the trail of the essence of who you are and of your personality.” Tiller’s writing is kicked off by an experimenting approach. “Playing and experimenting, not knowing what I have to do, not making plans but building things and being in that process and seeing where it ends is extraordinarily important for me. That’s why I think my novels become experiments and a play with a form that decides what I’ll write about.” “For me, it’s very important not to have a fixed starting point but to start playing and improvising and then see where the process ends. It’s part of the pleasure of writing. To be suddenly surprised that you discover a new landscape.” “As a writer, I’m oriented toward the dramatic art in the sense that my literature is driven by conflicts somewhat like it’s done in dramatic art. Conflicts drive the plot forward and change characters.” Carl Frode Tiller (b. 1970) is an author, historian and musician. His works are in Nynorsk (lit. “New Norwegian”), one of the two official Norwegian standard languages. Tiller debuted in 2001 with the novel Skråninga (Downward Slope), which was recognized as the best initial work of the year with the Tarjei Vesaas’ Debute Prize. ‘Downward Slope’ was nominated for the Brageprisen (the Brage Prize). In November 2007 Tiller was awarded the Brageprisen for his novel ‘Innsirkling’ (Encirclement). In the fall of 2007 ‘Innsirkling’ received the Norwegian Critics Prize for Literature and was nominated for the premiere Scandinavian literature prize, the Nordic Council’s Literature Prize. Klaus Rothstein interviewed Carl Frode Tiller in connection with the Louisiana Literature festival in August 2022 at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art.