Normalia

Sooner or later a Norwegian citizen will have to take responsibility for the country’s future and start to secrete oil out of his own body. Sooner or later someone will have to save the universities from themselves and form a resistance movement among frustrated students and pensioned-off professors. Someone will have to decide who qualifies as a grown-up, and who doesn’t. The nation deserves it. We deserve it.

All of us live in Normalia. The stories are about us, and it is to us the bulletins are addressed. Read them closely. Listen carefully.

Praise

‘[...]we experience his descriptions as concrete and realistic, as full of both metaphorical and ironic vigour as they are, even when they seem to become fantastic fable and parables. In tales about people “who didn’t really build the country, but at the very least gave it a coat of paint along the way,” he has a joyous style.’Stavanger Aftenblad

‘Jan Grue writes disquieting tales with a sceptical eye for ‘what’s normal.’”Klassekampen