Thure Erik Lund's Novel Arrives in English for the First Time
Readers of English can now meet Thure Erik Lund, a Norwegian novelist whose work has long been admired at home. His 1999 novel The Mystery of What Befell in the Ditch has its first English translation, and the Guardian has asked in its review headline whether Lund is the greatest living Norwegian writer.
The English edition is published by And Other Stories, an independent press, which lists its publication date as 20 October 2026. The translation is by David M. Smith. A translator turns a book from one language into another, and the publisher says that Lund, although long acclaimed in Norway, was considered untranslatable before this edition. And Other Stories
Lund's name carries weight with other writers. In a 2017 interview for the New York Times books section, the Norwegian novelist Karl Ove Knausgård named Lund as his definite favourite among contemporary writers. New York Times Knausgård has also called Lund the greatest Norwegian contemporary writer, a claim the Guardian's review puts at the centre of its discussion.
The narrator is Tomas Olsen Myrbråten. His initials spell T-O-M, which is the Norwegian word for "empty." Tomas is approaching 38 and spends his days at the kitchen table or staring out of the window.
His life has already come apart before the book begins in earnest. He is commissioned to write a think piece, a short essay of opinion, for the Royal Norwegian Ministry of Culture. After he confronts the culture minister, security guards remove him. He loses his reputation and his work, and he ends up homeless.
The novel's middle section takes him back to his parents' farm. The Guardian describes the farm as a perverted pastoral rather than an Arcadia. A pastoral is a literary tradition that romanticises country life, and Arcadia is its image of an idyllic rural paradise. The review sets the two words against each other to make its point about the farm.
Lund's novel is now in the hands of English-language readers, which is the point of a translation. For a book that spent more than two decades in one language, that is a long journey. Whether the English edition finds the readership its earlier Norwegian reception suggests is a question for the months ahead, and nobody can yet say how it will sell.
