Vladimir Putin knows the power of stories. With a better one, we can beat him | Jo Nesbø

I faced Russia's wrath for my TV series, Occupied. The Kremlin knows art can tell the truth about war - and it fears that

In 2015, the first season of Occupied was broadcast on Norwegian television. The series depicts a Russian occupation of Norway, something that is tacitly accepted by the EU and the United States as a way to restart oil production facilities that had been shut down by the green Norwegian government.

My aim for the show was to focus on the moral dilemmas faced by ordinary people in an extreme situation - to parallel what our parents and grandparents experienced during the German occupation of Norway between 1940 and 1945. The manoeuvring between a smaller country, a powerful neighbour and the rest of the world's ruling nations, balancing political principles against economic considerations and their own security, was the backdrop.

Jo Nesbo is a bestselling Norwegian novelist, screenwriter and musician. This article was translated from the Norwegian by Alice Menzies