The Dresser

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

Through his novelistic art, Thorvald Steen has long been an educator about overlooked or forgotten events in European history. In The Dresser, he takes us into one of the greatest catastrophes in Christian Europe: the Fourth Crusade in the year 1204. This is a fascinating epistolary novel about ruthlessness, betrayal, and the plundering of the world’s richest and most powerful city, Constantinople. Europe was never the same after this.

Vårt Land, Book of the Year 2023

…the plundering of Constantinople and the pivotal year 1204 have been brought to light thanks to Thorvald Steen’s new novel The Dresser. In this book, the historical events are not merely a backdrop; they are the very foundation of the novel… Steen portrays the events of 1204 from a surprising angle by stripping down and examining the man who can be considered the mastermind behind the destruction. He accomplishes this through the horrified observations of the protagonist, Massimo. Many of these observations are detailed physiognomically, allowing the reader to come uncomfortably close to one of history’s central, yet for most people completely unknown, figures.

Klassekampen