A man in the middle of his life is preparing for his first marathon in Dresden, but ends up going all in the night. Still, he receives a starting number and begins running. In Marathon Shots we follow a 42195-metre-long race with many associative digressions along the way. With music in his ears the rhythm of the race propagates through both in his body and mind, where the stream of consciousness of the marathon runner becomes its own race within a race. Before he reached the end line, he has also run through his life.

He passes the parks of Dresden, crosses bridges, sees a bald man running with a pineapple attached to his head, he takes shots from drinking stations that often miss his mouth, instead splashing on his shirt or the ground. The experience of running mixes with the experiences of life, from erotic fantasies to childhood memories, glimpses of his father at work in the welding hall, the letters his father sent home from a worktrip to China.

The author Dag Solstad has stated that joggers are outside walking their fear of death, which is very possible. The narrator of Geir Nummedal’s Marathon Shots isn’t scared of walking his fear of death, walking his rooms of remembrance, which has resulted in this particularly lively read.