The Exception: A Novel - Hardcover

Jungersen, Christian

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0385516290 ISBN 13: 9780385516297

Publisher: Nan A. Talese, 2007

Synopsis

A bestseller throughout Europe, THE EXCEPTION is a gripping dissection of the nature of evil and of the paranoia and obsessions that drive ordinary people to commit unthinkable acts.

Four women work together for a small nonprofit in Copenhagen that disseminates information on genocide. When two of them receive death threats, they immediately believe that they are being stalked by Mirko Zigic, a Serbian torturer and war criminal, whom they have recently profiled in their articles.

As the tensions mount among the women, their suspicions turn away from Zigic and toward each other. The threats increase and soon the office becomes a battlefield in which each of the women’s move is suspect. Their obsession turns into a witch hunt as they resort to bullying and victimization.

Yet these are people who daily analyze cases of appalling cruelty on a worldwide scale, and who are intimate with the psychology of evil. The cruelty which the women have described from a safe distance is now revealed in their own world. They discover that none of them is exactly the person she seems to be. And then they learn that Interpol has traced Mirko Zigic to Denmark.

THE EXCEPTION is a unique and intelligent thriller, heralding Christian Jungersen as a gifted storyteller and keen observer of the human psyche.

About this title

About the Author

CHRISTIAN JUNGERSEN’s novel Thickets won the Best First Novel award in Denmark. THE EXCEPTION, his second novel, won Denmark’s prestigious Golden Laurels prize and is Jungersen’s English language debut. Born in Copenhagen, he now divides his time between Dublin, Ireland and New York City.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Chapter 1
“Don’t they ever think about anything except killing each other?” Roberto asks. Normally he would never say such a harsh thing.

The truck with the four aid workers and two of the hostage takers on the tailgate has been stopped for an hour or more. Burned–out cars block the road ahead, but it ought to be possible to reverse and outflank them by driving right through the flimsy small shacks.

“I mean, what are we waiting for? Why don’t they just drive on through the crowd?”

Roberto’s English accent is usually perfect, but now, for the first time, you can hear that he is Italian. He is struggling for breath. Sweat pours down his cheeks and into the corners of his mouth.

The slum surrounds them. It smells and looks like a filthy cattle pen. The car stands on a mud surface, still ridged with tracks made after the last rains, now baked as hard as stoneware by the sun. The Nubians have constructed their grayish brown huts from a framework of torn-off branches spread with cow dung. Dense clusters of huts are scattered all over the dusty plain.

Roberto, Iben’s immediate boss, looks at his fellow hostages. “Why can’t they at least pull over into the shade?” He falls silent and lifts his hand very slowly toward the lower rim of his sunglasses.

One of the hostage takers turns his head away from watching the locals to stare at Roberto and shakes his sharpened, one–and–a–half–foot–long panga. It is enough to make Roberto lower his arm with the same measured slowness.

Iben sighs. Drops of sweat have collected in her ears and everything sounds muffled, a bit like the whirring of a fan.

Garbage, mostly rotting green items mixed with human excrement, has piled up against the wall of a nearby cow dung hut. The sloping three–foot–high mound gives off the unmistakable stench of the slum.

“O glorious Name of Jesus, gracious Name,” the youngest of their captors intones. “Name of love and power! Through You, sins are forgiven, enemies are vanquished, the sick...”

Iben looks up at him. He is very different from the child soldiers she wrote about back home in Copenhagen. It’s easy to spot that he is new to all this and caving in under the pressure. Until now he’s been high on some junk, but he’s coming down and terror is tearing him apart. He stands there, his eyes fixed on the sea of people that surrounds the car just a short distance away; a crowd that is growing and becoming better armed with every passing minute.

Tears are running down the boy’s cheeks. He clutches his scratched black machine gun with one hand while his other hand rubs the cross that hangs from a chain around his neck outside his red and blue I LOVE HONG KONG T–shirt.

The boy must have been a member of an English–language church, because he has stopped using his native Dhuluo and instead is babbling in English, prayers and long quotes from the Bible, in solemn tones, as if he were reading a Latin mass:

“Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life. And I will dwell in the house of the Lord for the length of all my days...”
***

It’s autumn back home in Copenhagen, but apart from the season changing, everything has stayed the same. People’s homes look the way they always did. Iben’s friends wear their usual clothes and talk about the same things.

Iben has started work again. Three months have passed since she and the others were taken hostage and held prisoner in a small African hut somewhere near Nairobi. She remembers how important home had seemed to all of them. She remembers the diarrhea, the armed guards, the heat, and the fear that dominated their lives.

Now a voice inside her insists that it was not true, not real. Her experiences in Kenya resist being made part of her quiet, orderly life at home. She can’t be that woman lying on the mud floor with a machine–gun nozzle pressed to her temple. She remembers it in a haze, as if it were a scene in some experimental film seen long ago.

This evening Iben has come to see Malene. They are planning to go to a party later, given by an old friend from their university days.

Iben mixes them a large mojito each. She waits for her best friend to pick something to wear. Another track of the Afro funk CD with Fela Kuti starts up. After one more swallow, she can see the bottom of her glass.

Malene emerges to look at herself in the mirror. “Why do I always seem to end up wearing something more boring than all the outfits I've tried on at home?”

She scrutinizes herself in a black, almost see–through dress, which would have been right for New Year’s Eve but is wrong for a Friday–night get–together hosted by a woman who lives in thick sweaters.

“I guess we just go to boring parties.”

Malene is already on her way back to the bedroom to find something less flashy.

Iben calls out after her: “And you can bet tonight will be really dull. At...Sophie’s!” She pauses, as if the mere mention of Sophie’s name says it all, and hears Malene adopt a silly voice: “Oh, yes...at Sophie’s.”

They both laugh.

Iben sips her drink while she looks over the bookshelves as she has done so many times before. When she arrives somewhere new she always likes to check out the books as soon as she can. At parties she discreetly scans the titles and authors’ names, filtering out the music and distant chatter.

She pulls out a heavy volume, a collection of anthropological articles. Clutching it in her arms, she sways in time to one of the slower tracks. Her drink is strong enough to create a blissfully ticklish sensation.

She holds her cold glass, presses it against her chest, and gently waltzes with the book while she reads about the initiation ritual to adulthood for Xingu Indian girls. They are made to stay in windowless huts, sometimes for as long as three years, and emerge into the sunlight plump and pale, with volumes of long, brittle hair. Only then does the tribe accept them as true women.

Also on the bookshelf is the tape that Malene’s partner, Rasmus, recorded of the television programs on which Iben appeared when she returned from Kenya. It sits there on the shelf in front of her.

Nibbling on a cracker, she puts the tape into the machine and presses Play without bothering to turn down the music. As the images emerge on the screen, she takes a seat.

Now and then she laughs as she observes the small puppet-Iben, sitting there in front of the cameras of TV2 News and TV Report, pretending to be so wise and serious as she explains how the Danish Center for Information on Genocide, where she works as an information officer, lent her to an aid organization based in Kenya. There is a short sequence filmed in a Nairobi slum before the camera records the arrival of the freed hostages at the American embassy for their first press conference. She studies these images. Every time she sees them, they seem just as fresh and unfamiliar.

Malene comes back, trailing a faint scent of perfume and wearing a gauzy chocolate–colored dress. Dresses suit her. It’s easy to understand what men see in her. With her thick chestnut hair and lightly tanned skin, she looks positively appetizing, like a great smooth, glowing sweet.

Malene realizes at once which tape Iben is watching and gives her friend a little hug before sitting down next to her on the sofa.

Iben turns down the music. Roberto, still in Nairobi, is addressing a journalist: “In captivity it was Iben who kept telling us that we must talk to each other about what was happening, repeating the words over and over until they were devoid of meaning, or as near as we possibly...”

He smiles, but looks worn. They were all examined by doctors and psychologists, but Roberto took longer than anyone else before he was ready to go home.

“Iben explained that there were a lot of studies demonstrating how beneficial this could be in preventing post–traumatic stress...”

TV Report cuts to Iben speaking in a Copenhagen studio. “If you want to prevent post–traumatic stress disorder, it’s crucial to start debriefing as soon as possible. We had no idea how long we were going to be held. It could have been months, which was why it was a good idea to start trying to structure our responses to what we were experiencing during captivity...”

Safe in Malene’s apartment, Iben groans and reaches for her drink. “I come across as...totally unbearable.”

“You’re not the tiniest bit unbearable. The point is, you knew about this and most people don’t.”

“But it’s just the kind of stuff that journalists are always after. I sound like such a psychology nerd...as if I had no feelings.”

Malene puts down her drink, smiles, and touches Iben's hand. “Couldn’t it be that they were simply fascinated by the way you managed to stay in control inside that little cow dung hideout? You were heroic. No one knows what goes on inside the mind of a hero, and you certainly weren’t used to being one.”

Iben can’t think of anything to say. They laugh.

Iben nods at Malene’s dress. “You know that you can’t turn up at Sophie’s in that.”

“Of course I do.”

The next recordings are Iben's appearances on Good Morning, Denmark and Deadline. On screen she looks like somebody quite different from the old stay–at–home Iben. Normally her shoulder–length blond hair is thick but without the sheen that the sun brings out in most blondes. The African light, however, ha...

Edition details

• Publisher: Nan A. Talese
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 0385516290
• ISBN 13: 9780385516297
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 512