Description:
The 'greatest Norwegian contemporary writer' (Knausgård) finally in English: An exhilarating, hallucinatory exploration of language, isolation, and the search for an authentic life.
Deep in the Norwegian wilderness, Tomas Olsen Myrbråten is a man at war with the modern world.. After a bureaucratic cultural assignment spirals into a public scandal and his desperate flight, Tomas attempts to shed civilisation to become a 'man of the forest'.
Long acclaimed in Norway, but considered untranslatable, Thure Erik Lund is now available in English for the first time in David M. Smith's radically brilliant translation. The Mystery of What Befell in the Ditch is a profound, hallucinatory exploration of language and isolation, particularly about how we make a language our own, how we distinguish our own thoughts from those that have been fed into us. This cornerstone of contemporary Norwegian literature is an exhilarating journey into the dark heart of the life of the mind.
Brief description:
Thure Erik Lund (b. 1959) is one of Norway's most innovative and highly acclaimed authors. He made his debut with Tanger in 1992, for which he was awarded the Tarjei Vesaas' Debutant Prize. He has since published eight more novels and two collections of essays, which has earned him the Norwegian Critic's Award, The Scandinavian Award for best contemporary novel, and The Natt og Dag Book of the Year Award.
Review Quotes:
"For me, Thure Erik Lund is the greatest Norwegian contemporary writer. He is so innovative, his prose is so alive, he is the most vital writer I know."--Karl Ove Knausgård, Vagant
"Envelope-pushing . . . and patience-testing." --Kirkus
"A masterful storyteller."--Dagbladet
"Lund will be remembered as one of the great authors of our time, and one of those who took the novel genre the furthest."--Tom Egil Hverven
"Thure Erik Lund is the best of his generation, simply a genius and as visionary an author as they come."--Oddmund Hagen
"There are passages in this mad work of literature that are so extraordinarily good they have me shaking."--Cathrine Krøger
"The astonishment and the strangeness only multiply beyond any comparison . . . I feel so lucky to read this translation of a book so mind-bendingly brilliant, real, and utterly lonely, that I too spent some time crying at the kitchen table." --Emily Tarr, Thank You Books