This gripping and highly disturbing novel takes place in a coastal village in Spain – not the tourist Spain of toreadors and castanets, but a country of passionate and brooding people with the fury of the Civil War still fresh in their minds. A land of poverty, of hot summers and cold winters, and of violence hidden by fear. Against this backdrop, Dan and Siglinde Pedersen – a cheerful, irresponsible and beautiful couple from Norway – live in a dilapidated cottage with their lonely and introspective companion, Willi Mohr. When Siglinde Pederen sees her husband murdered, and is then brutally raped and killed, it sets Willi Mohr, the hitherto apathetic anti-hero, on his own violent road to resolving the conflict between alienation and commitment.

Regarded as one of the most extraordinary and exciting Scandinavian novels of the sixties, A Necessary Action is a unique fusion of tension, social insight, and awareness of the connection between political frustration and sexual violence.