The Mystery of What Befell in the Ditch - Thure Erik Lund

The Mystery of What Befell in the Ditch by Thure Erik Lund, translated by David M. Smith / 304-page paperback published in 2026 by And Other Stories / ISBN 9781916751712

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The ‘greatest Norwegian contemporary writer’ (Knausgard) finally in English: An exhilarating, hallucinatory exploration of language, isolation, and the search for an authentic life.

Deep in the Norwegian wilderness, Tomas Olsen Myrbraten 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.

“A universal story of modernity and its discontents . . . The Mystery of What Befell in the Ditch is prescient about the ‘language forms’ that digital capitalism requires – the data and information, the ‘demonic and inhuman’ scientism, the fear of allegory.” —Sukhdev Sandhu, The Guardian

“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 Knausgard, Vagant

“Everything pretty much breaks down, including language and meaning, in this quite mad novel, which will either give you a nervous breakdown, bore you senseless or leave you exhilarated by the possibilities of the form.”—Claire Allfree, Daily Mail

Thure Erik Lund (b. 1959) 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.