On 22 July 2011 a young man named Anders Behring Breivik carried out one of the most vicious terrorist acts in post-war Europe. In a carefully orchestrated sequence of actions he bombed government buildings in Oslo, resulting in eight deaths, then carried out a mass shooting at a camp of the Workers Youth League of the Labour Party on the island of Utøya, where he murdered 69 people, mostly teenagers. How could Anders Behring Breivik - a seemingly normal middle-class kid from the West End of Oslo - end up as one of the most violent terrorists in post-war Europe? Where did his hatred come from?In A Norwegian Tragedy, Aage Borchgrevink attempts to provide an answer. Taking us with him to the multiethnic and class-divided city where Breivik grew up, he follows the perpetrator of the attacks into an unfamiliar online world of violent computer games and anti-Islamic hatred, and demonstrates the connection between Breiviks childhood and the darkest pages of his diary and other writings.This is the definitive story of 22 July 2011: a Norwegian tragedy.
