A Kirkus Reviews Best Fiction Title of 2011 In Buzz Aldrin, What Happened to You in All the Confusion?, 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. Through Harstad's "delectably light but nonetheless impactful prose . . . [t]he 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). 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.

A terrifying thriller for young adult fans of The Martian and paranormal space adventure that will be devoured in one heart-pounding sitting. It's been decades since anyone set foot on the moon. Now three ordinary teenagers, the winners of NASA's unprecedented, worldwide lottery, are about to become the first young people in space--and change their lives forever. It's the opportunity of a lifetime, but little do the teenagers know that something sinister is waiting for them on the desolate surface of the moon. And in the black vacuum of space...no one is coming to save them. In this chilling adventure set in the most brutal landscape known to man, highly acclaimed Norwegian novelist Johan Harstad creates a vivid and frightening world of possibilities we can only hope never come true.

Johan Harstad's debut novel tells the story of Mattias, a thirty-something gardener living in Norway, whose idol is Buzz Aldrin, the second man on the moon: a man willing to stand in Neil Armstrong's shadow in the service of the Apollo 11 mission. Following a series of disasters, Mattias finds himself lying on a rain-soaked road in the desolate, treeless Faroe Islands when a truck approaches. The driver is a troubled man, who stops and makes Mattias an offer that will soon change his life. Using the lunar-like landscape of the Faroe Islands as a backdrop, the novel deals with the characters' attempts at finding a balance between being second best and anonymous without going into total isolation. Read the review in the Weekend Australian

Exploring Text, Media and Memory investigates the link between memory and media by asking a series of questions pertinent to our time: How do individual and collective memories blend? How do traumatic experiences from past events and catastrophic projections of the future reveal the human condition in the epoch of frenetic technological reproduction of works of art? How is the human body tied to narrations - and why? A group of international scholars tackle questions like these across art forms, media, and cultural history. In nineteen essays they argue that modern and contemporary literary texts and visual arts show how photography, film, tape recording, television, and internet are not just means of storing memory and information, but objects that we interact with every day - challenging static visions of places and the linear notions of past, present and future.

This book investigates how the emergence of the Arctic as a new geopolitical arena affects and reshapes the area known as the North Atlantic: Greenland, Iceland, the Faroe Islands and coastal Norway. The relationship between the center of the former Danish empire and its subordinates have rested on (varying degrees of) asymmetric power relations, that are intertwined with political as well as emotional bonds. With climate change a whole new reality is emerging in the Arctic and sub-Arctic areas. Power is moving north, and new connections and partnerships are being developed. As the North Atlantic countries share a history as being part of a Danish empire, some of the hierarchies and mindsets inherited from the past still affect the present. This calls for an in-depth understanding of the cultural history of the North Atlantic as well as current relations. What narratives make up the foundation for contemporary cooperation? How are historical relations and narratives being reinterpreted today? How do postcolonial relations affect decision-making concerning natural resources? How do North Atlantic communities envision the future? A team of historians, literary theorists, art historians, ethno - graphers and culture and communication scholars with profound insight into the histories, languages and cultures of the North Atlantic have collaborated on this study of the North Atlantic countries as an emerging new center in the North. Foundations that made this publication possible: Carlsberg Foundation

For centuries, the art of translation has been misconstrued as a solitary affair. Yet, from Antiquity to the Middle Ages, groups of translators comprised of specialists of different languages formed in order to transport texts from one language and culture to another. Collaborative Translation uncovers the collaborative practices occluded in Renaissance theorizing of translation to which our individualist notions of translation are indebted. Leading translation scholars as well as professional translators have been invited here to detail their experiences of collaborative translation, as well as the fruits of their research into this neglected form of translation. This volume offers in-depth analysis of rich, sometimes explosive, relationships between authors and their translators. Their negotiations of cooperation and control, assistance and interference, are shown here to shape the translation of prominent modern authors such as Günter Grass, Vladimir Nabokov and Haruki Murakami. The advent of printing, the cultural institutions and the legal and political environment that regulate the production of translated texts have each formalized many of the inherently social and communicative practices of translation. Yet this publishing regime has been profoundly disrupted by the technologies that are currently revolutionizing collaborative translation techniques. This volume details the impact that this technological and environmental evolution is having upon the translator, proliferating sites and communities of collaboration, transforming traditional relationships with authors and editors, revisers, stage directors, actors and readers.

The engrossing epic novel—a #1 bestseller in Norway—of a young woman whose fate plays out against her village’s mystical church bells—now in paperback As long as people could remember, the stave church’s bells had rung over the isolated village of Butangen, Norway. Cast in memory of conjoined twins, the bells are said to ring on their own in times of danger. In 1879, young pastor Kai Schweigaard moves to the village, where young Astrid Hekne yearns for a modern life. She sees a way out on the arm of the new pastor, who needs a tie to the community to cull favor for his plan for the old stave church, with its pagan deity effigies and supernatural bells. When the pastor makes a deal that brings an outsider, a sophisticated German architect, into their world, the village and Astrid are caught between past and future, as dark forces come into play. Lars Mytting, bestselling author of Norwegian Wood, brings his deep knowledge of history, carpentry, fishing, and stave churches to this compelling historical novel, an international bestseller sold in 12 countries. With its broad-canvas narrative about the intersection of religion, superstition, and duty, The Bell in the Lake is an irresistible story of ancient times and modern challenges, by a powerful international voice.