Rat Catcher was the name given to the Norwegian resistance fighters who carried out the dirtiest jobs during the second world war. They exterminated or, liquidated, informers, torturers and other Norwegians who worked for the Germans.

The post-war period of war history is fascinating yet has been mostly concealed. In this short novel written in 1948 by my stepfather Max Manus, a well-known resistance fighter, it tells a story of the Rat Catchers. At the centre is Max's alter ego Freddy and a group of veterans. They try to find love and their place in society but drown out the bad memories from the days of war in different ways.

We actually know quite a lot about my stepfather Max Manus - as early as 1945 he published Det vil helst gå godt, followed by Det blir alvor in 1946, and in 1995 Mitt liv (My Life) was published. In addition, the book Tikken, which is about my mother, was published in 2009.
Max's war books were a success. He himself claimed that only the Bible sold more in the post-war years!

People were keen to know what kind of life the boys really lived during the war. In 2008 the film Max Manus became a blockbuster and the most watched movie in Norway. It was directed by Joachim and Espen Sandberg (Pirates of Caribbean, Maleficent: Mistress of Evil, Kon-Tiki, Bandidas).
It shows authentically, as my mother confirmed, what the atmosphere was like during the war, and what role Max had played.

The story told in The Rat Catcher (Rottejegeren in Norwegian) is from the years immediately after the war, and we assume that Max wrote it in 1948. After all he felt he had proven to himself and the world that he could write.
His joint company Clausen & Manus did not demand too much from him so in 1953 he started his own company, Max Manus Kontormaskiner (supplier of office machines).

Auteur

RAT CATCHERS was the term for the Norwegian resistance fighters who performed the dirtiest jobs during the Second World War.
They liquidated informers, torturers and other Norwegians who worked for the Germans.

"THE RAT CATCHER" was written by my stepfather, Max Manus (1914-1996), as early as in 1948. At that time, his two classic war books "Det vil helst gå godt" and "Det blir alvor" were already successful books.

The manuscript of this novel laid for many years in the bottom drawer of a rose-painted cupboard in our living room at home on Landøya in Asker just outside Oslo, Norway.

In the late seventies the script was bound in a hard cover with a leather spine and was given to Max as a birthday present.
To this day no one in the family knows what happened to the book. A few years before my mother died she gave me a copy.

Max was half Danish, and his language was marked by this. Moreover, he rose supremely above normalised spelling.
In this English version I have translated it with great care in order to preserve all the original detail and story.

In 2008 the film "Max Manus" (English: "Man of War"), was released. It became a smash hit just like his books, and a blockbuster in Norwegian cinemas.
The Norwegian version of The Rat Catcher (Rottejegeren), was published in Norway in 2021 by Kagge Forlag AS, and became a best-seller.
No one can explain why Max did not publish the novel while he was alive.