Buzz Aldrin, What Happened to You in All the Confusion? by Johan Harstad

I try to protect friends from ending up in my books. Question: Is the character of Mattias based on anyone you know? For instance, the art scene in the capital is really vibrant and interesting. And in the six years that have passed since the book first came out, I've been back once or twice every year, just because I feel very much at home there now and I've gotten to know some of the great people living there. In many ways I felt I knew the Faroe Islands quite well without having been to the country, but I did go there three or four times, by boat or by plane, while working on the novel, staying for a few weeks every time, in summer sun and monotonous rain for days and days, heavy fog and cold autumn evenings. Johan Harstad: One of my closest friends who I have known since I was 7 is half-Faroe, so I grew up with hearing all these things about the place. Question: Did you travel to The Faroe Islands as research? Harstad lives in Oslo.īuzz Aldrin, What Happened to You in All the Confusion? His first novel, Buzz Aldrin, What Happened to You in All the Confusion? has been made into a TV series starring The Wire's Chad Coleman. Johan Harstad, winner of the 2008 *Brage Award, is a Norwegian author, graphic designer, playwright, drummer. 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. 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 buses, and even Buzz Aldrin himself, Buzz Aldrin, What Happened To You In All The Confusion? is an epic story of Mattias's pop-saturated odyssey. With a wad of bills in his pocket and no memory of how he had come to be there, a truck approaches driven by a troubled man with an offer that will shortly change Mattias's life. (*The Faroe Islands are situated between Iceland and Great Britain).

While obsessing about Aldrin, Mattias encounters a series of disasters, climaxing with him waking up on a rain-soaked road in the desolate Faroe Islands. It tells the story of Mattias, a thirty-something gardener living in Norway, whose idol is Buzz Aldrin, the second man on the moon. Buzz Aldrin, What Happened to You in All the Confusion? InterviewĪward-winning Norwegian author and playwright Johan Harstad's debut, Buzz Aldrin, What Happened to You in All the Confusion? published to great acclaim in eleven languages, makes its way into English under the steerage of UWA Publishing (Perth) & Seven Stories Press (NYC).

Buzz Aldrin, What Happened to You in All the Confusion? by Johan Harstad