Hello, I'm Lauren Laverne and this is the Desert Island Discs podcast
from BBC Radio 4. Every week I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, book and luxury,
that they'd want to take with them if they were cast away to a desert island.
For rights reasons, the music's shorter than on the original broadcast,
but you can find a version with longer music tracks on BBC Sounds.
Listeners will also get access to episodes 28 days earlier than everyone else.
I hope you enjoy listening.
My castaway this week is the writer Joe Nesbo.
Known as the king of Nordic noir, his internationally best-selling crime thrillers, following the exploits
of renegade detective Harry Hula, have been translated into 50 languages, sold over 60 million copies,
and been adapted for film and TV, with Netflix, the latest production company,
to snap up the rights to his stories, making him the most commercially successful author Norway has ever produced.
Yet writing wasn't his burning ambition, or even his first career.
He grew up determined to become a pro footballer,
a dream he achieved at 17 when he was signed by his hometown's football club, Mulder FK.
After an injury put paid to that, he joined the army, became a successful stockbroker and then a rock star.
By 36, he was wondering what was next, so he took a break and booked a flight to Australia.
By the time he landed, he had Harry Hula and the outline of his first adventure,
The Bat, as well as 13 stories about Harry.
He's written short story collections, numerous standalone novels and five children's books.