{"id":6134,"date":"2018-02-12T12:25:12","date_gmt":"2018-02-12T11:25:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/martinroe.com\/blog\/?p=6134"},"modified":"2018-02-11T12:35:35","modified_gmt":"2018-02-11T11:35:35","slug":"books-on-monday-norwegian-author-johan-harstad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/martinroe.com\/blog\/books-on-monday-norwegian-author-johan-harstad\/","title":{"rendered":"Books on Monday: Norwegian author Johan Harstad"},"content":{"rendered":"

Novel: Buzz Aldrin, What Happened to You in All the Confusion?<\/span><\/p>\n

Buzz Aldrin, What Happened to You in All the Confusion?<\/span><\/h6>\n

by\u00a0Johan Harstad\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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In\u00a0Buzz Aldrin, What Happened to You in All the Confusion?<\/i>, readers follow a man who wishes not to be followed, a man who, after a series of personal and professional disasters, finds himself lying on a rain-soaked road in the desolate, treeless Faroe Islands, population only a few thousand, a wad of bills in his pocket and no memory of how he had come to be there. From there, Brage Award-winning author and playwright Johan Harstad’s debut novel–previously published to great success in eleven countries with its first English-language appearance in June 2011–tells the story of Mattias, a thirty-something gardener living in Stavanger, Norway, whose idol is Buzz Aldrin, second man on the moon: the man who was willing to stand in Neil Armstrong’s shadow in order to work, diligently and humbly, for the success of the Apollo 11 mission.<\/p>\n

Through Harstad’s “delectably light but nonetheless impactful prose . . . the novel’s finest moments wrap you up in communion with Mattias, as if you are spending a quiet afternoon with an old friend, chatting but mostly thinking” (Three Percent<\/i>). Surrounded by a vivid and memorable cast of characters–aspiring pop musicians, Caribbean-obsessed psychologists, death-haunted photographers, girls who dream of anonymous men falling in love with them on bus trips, and even Buzz Aldrin himself–“Harstad combines formal play and linguistic ferocity with a searing emotional directness” (Dedi Felman, Words Without Borders) to bring Mattias to the realization that he cannot always blend into the background.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>