latest book by Tamás Kötter, lawyer and public opinion-former, Vikingek, was published for this year's book week . As (the Mandiner) touched on in a previous conversation , the book's subject is one of the "mental and social diseases" of our time, serial addiction, and how it affects the individual.
The author said at the time that in the novel "the main characters are upper-middle-class people who work at multiplexes, who can no longer live the transcendent, they don't read to read, but they still look for points of alignment and entertainment: they find it in Netflix. The focus is on two families who move in next to each other. The men start watching the series Vikings, which changes both of their lives fatally." (…)
Where did the idea for the book come from?
My interest in Vikings was sparked by a conversation I had with a dear friend. During an innocent breakfast, the person drew my attention to the vikings' unquenchable zest for life, their customs and, not least, their special relationship with women (they beat them against the wall) and at the same time formed a devastating opinion about our monogamous Christian values, at least in terms of our sexual life. This conversation made a great impression on me, I immediately saw the possibility of a writer in it, and it didn't take much, my short story Vikings was already ready.
Later, when I was thinking about what topic to write a new novel on, I simply returned to this short story, which also worked well as a plot framework for a longer story. Here I really had to immerse myself in the world of the series, and I had to study the life of the Vikings, their customs, their values and everything else that one should know about these wild, often unpredictable, capable of all things, but at the same time very lovable northern peoples, if one chooses them precisely as the background of a novel that takes place very much today and deals with contemporary problems.
Did you personally like the series Vikings?
I started the series purely for "professional" reasons, but then I liked it, even if moderately.
What I didn't like was the carelessness that permeated the entire film and is typical of similar works: the protective equipment of the characters is more reminiscent of the world of Mad Max than that of Viking warriors, the lack of wearing helmets is conspicuous (who was that crazy, especially if you are a leader wealthy warrior - anyway the poorest did the same - who didn't protect the most vulnerable part of his body, the head?), that about the weapons that did not suit the age (the crossbow, for example, only appeared in Europe after the Crusades) and about the battle scenes fought with thirty or forty men already let's not even talk. That was not good.
And since many people are "taught" exclusively by series instead of books, we can ultimately talk about falsification of history. And this is harmful!
Mandiner's full article here.
Author: Gergő Kovács
Image: Facebook
