Sigurd Evensmo

Born Feb. 14, 1912, in Hamar. Norwegian writer.

Evensmo took part in the resistance movement, which is the subject of his novel The Fugitives (1945; Russian translation, 1962). In 1942 he was imprisoned in a concentration camp, where he spent two years. Evensmo’s realistic trilogy comprising The Border (1947), The Bats (1949), and Homeward Bound (1951) is a unique social history of Norway during the 1930’s and 1940’s. In his antiwar science-fiction novel The Enigma of the Year Zero (1957), he depicted the earth after an atomic catastrophe. In the screenplay for the film The Africans (1965) he criticized racial discrimination. Evensmo is the author of The Grand Tivoli: The Norwegian Cinema Over the Past 70 Years (1967), the first history of Norway’s cinematography. In the book Violence in Films (1969), he attacked horror films. In collaboration with A. Brinchman he published Norwegian Writers in War and Peace (1968).