OSLO — One year after the publication of her novel “Will and Testament,” the Norwegian author Vigdis Hjorth was at home with her two daughters when she received a surprising email. Hjorth’s widely read 2016 book, which tells the story of an Oslo woman who accuses her father of sexually assaulting her as a child, and which was seemingly inspired by elements of Hjorth’s own life, had spurred a debate in Norway about the ethics of adapting real events into fiction.

The email informed her that her younger sister, Helga Hjorth, was publishing a novel of her own. The sister’s book focused on a woman whose life was upended by the release of a dishonest sibling’s autobiographical novel, and seemed to be an answer to “Will and Testament.”

“The older sister in that novel is an awful human being, very cruel, narcissistic, alcoholic, psychopathic,” Vigdis Hjorth , 60, said in a recent interview. “And, you know, as bad as she was, I thought, ‘This is good for me.’”

The Hjorths’ dueling novels are one of the stranger turns in a controversy about a genre of writing called “virkelighetslitteratur,” or “reality fiction,” that has been roiling the Norwegian literature world recently. Some have accused high-profile Norwegian fiction writers, including Hjorth and the country’s most famous writer, Karl Ove Knausgaard, of violating the privacy of others by publishing intimate details under the guise of fiction. Others have pushed back against what they see as a hysterical overreaction to a longstanding literary practice.