Our Street

[A] powerful, important and artistically successful novel about growing up as a second generation immigrant in Oslo-Suburbia.

OUR STREET isn't important because it represents something or someone, but because it's a really great novel.

The novel offers political awareness on a difficult subject. It offers drugs, unemployment, child neglect, but also care, warmth, humor and a pride over your roots.

Suddenly it is here: The powerful, important and artistically successful novel about growing up as a second generation immigrant in Oslo-Suburbia. About time! The book succeeds as both a coming-of-age and a political novel. The historical backdrop includes September 11th and the Muhammad Cartoon Controversy in Jyllandsposten; how these incidents are met by the immigrant society the boys grow up in, and how the politicians use negative news on conditions they know nothing about, to gain their own cause. [It] awakes both a feeling of release and of discomfort. Release as it feels reliable, suspenseful and the language innovative. Discomfort as it paints a picture of a society where the so-called integration process is still miles away, putting it gently.

When there’s hardly anything about a debut to put your finger on, you start wondering which name the author has used for his previous novels. [...] It is just impressing how the author manages to create two so distinct characters, yet not making a cliché out of them. [Shakar] has also stayed clear from the day-to-day racism that so easily justifies itself as backdrop for a novel like this. Instead, he has invited the reader into two family houses, one of them clearly dysfunctional; the other so called well adjusted. Both of them show how the structures of society shapes them, and how they become, or don’t become, a functional part of it.