The Dresser

Thorvald Steen

Original title: Påklederen
Publisher: Forlaget Oktober , 2023
Genre: Novel
Pages: 192 pages

Intense chamber drama about betrayal and sin

The year is 1204. Massimo Gasparino was once the most trusted aide to the Doge of Venice, Enrico Dandolo, but he has now been demoted to a dresser and is being held captive by the Doge in an apartment in Constantinople.

Gasparino writes a secret letter to Pope Innocent III in which he professes that he’s witnessed the most egregious crime in human history: the Fourth Crusade to Jerusalem has deliberately been redirected to Constantinople. The city is plundered and the loot transported to Venice. Gasparino writes about the vast extent of the betrayal and the sin, depicting one of the greatest disasters in Christian Europe.

The Dresser is an ambitious novel about betrayal and sin, and about a war that continues to cast shadows over modern-day conflicts.

Steen writes precisely and exceptionally wisely – and with a hint of humour and beauty. He plays with the novel genre, storytelling, and the epistolary form with mastery and elegance. The Dresser is an intense and heartfelt chamber drama about vanity and overzealous ambition, about powerlessness and guilt.

The Dresser has received glowing reviews and been listed among the best books of 2023 by several critics.

Foreign rights

Swedish: Heidruns Förlag
World English: Seagull Books

Thorvald Steen has transformed a history lesson into a dramatic story. He has also expanded our awareness and understanding of the powerful passions and forces at work behind catastrophes and wars. He has done this through the tightly spun and precise revelations ofThe Dresser. … Conveyed in an understated and precise literary voice, the author demonstrates yet again how history’s catastrophes can be reflected in the individual’s most base and brutal qualities. The Dresser is also an illustration of the relationship between master and servant. Knowledge is not always power; it can also be your downfall.

Dagsavisen

Steen has written an ambitious novel based on little known historical events that had enormous consequences for posterity… I don’t think I am the only reader who, after finishing this epistolary novel, was left with the desire to read more about the historical events and consequences of what took place.

Vårt Land

Thorvald Steen

Photo: Trine Hisdal

Thorvald Steen’s (b. 1954) literary career began in 1983, and he has since produced a diverse body of work spanning a variety of genres. Translated into 30 languages so far, Steen has received praise and prizes for the quality of his authorship in Norway and abroad.