Buzz Aldrin, What Happened To You In All The Confusion

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Description

Mattias is a 30-something gardener living in Norway, whose idol is Buzz Aldrin, second man on the moon. Following a series of personal and professional disasters, Mattias finds himself lying on a rain-soaked road on treeless Faroe Islands with no memory of how he got there. Then a truck approaches him, driven by a troubled, fantastic man with an offer that will shortly change Mattias's life. An epic odyssey through a pop-saturated world of unconventional psychiatry, souvenir sheep-making, The Cardigans and space - with a cameo from Buzz himself.

Reviews

"This paradoxical desire to be seen without being heralded sets Harstad's hero apart from other tormented young men of contemporary literature . . . [an] ambitious debut." Publisher's Weekly

"The austere landscape and people of the Faeroes become players in Harstads poetic narrative, half-dramatic and half-comic, which takes on memorable turns with every page as Mattias realizes just how not in control of his destiny he really is. A modern saga of rocketships, ice floes and dreams of the Caribbean, and great fun to read." Kirkus Reviews

"Like Jonathan Safran Foer, Harstad combines formal play and linguistic ferocity with a searing emotional directness." Dedi Felman, Words Without Borders

"The fact is that Johan Harstad has a wholly unique voice, simultaneously both concrete and soaring . . . to be able to write in this way, to conjure a situation and construct space and time around it with such linguistic fluency, cannot be learned. You are born with it. Harstads fellow countryman Knut Hamsun, who was able to do the same, must be rejoicing in his heaven or wherever he might be." Jakob Levinsen, Jyllands-Posten review

"It doesnt always have to be crime novels that come from Scandinavia. What 27 year-old Johan Harstad has written is quite plainly a work of genius. Buzz Aldrin, What Happened to You in All the Confusion is as poetic as it is alive." Bucherwelt review

In a voice and vision that alternately channels Ignatius J. Reilly, Holden Caulfield, Dave Eggers, and the Little Prince, Mattias unwraps his psyche while unwrapping an unknown landscape Harstad's language is rife with trickery, pop-culture, and formal derring-do. It's as if, with every crafted word and considered detail, Harstad is announcing, pleading: Trust me folks, there is more to this place than Stieg Larsson.Cleveland Plain Dealer

Author Bio

Johan Harstad, winner of the 2008 Brage Award (previously won by Per Petterson), is a Norwegian author, playwright, graphic designer, drummer, and international sensation, with books published in eleven countries. His first novel, Buzz Aldrin, What Happened to You in All the Confusion, was made into a 2009 TV series starring The Wire's Chad Coleman. Harstad lives in Oslo.