The Mystery of What Befell in the Ditch
- Author: Thure Erik Lund (Norway)
- Book type: Norwegian novel
- Original: Grøftetildragelsesmysteriet (1999)
- English translation: David M. Smith
- Publisher: And Other Stories
- To be released: October 20, 2026
- Length: 304 pages
- Sizes: 12,9 x 19,8 cm
- Weight: 190 gram
- Format: paperback
- Prize: £ 14.99 / £ 11.99
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Thure Erik Lund The Mystery of What Befell in the Ditch reviews and information
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- “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)
Blurb of the Thure Erik Lund novel
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.
Thure Erik Lund was born June 27, 1959 in Modumm, Norway. He 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. He is based in Oslo.