Literature and Fiction · Hardback

Facts about Finland

Norwegian title: Fakta om Finland

Erlend Loe

I dream about water again. Dream that the water is on me, in me and around me, floating, dripping, and I have heard that the meaning of dreaming about water is change, and every time I dream about water I think: Damned, change again. Will it ever end?In central Oslo lives a man that has found a way to protect his simple being against the chaos of life. Everything should be kept as safe and stagnant at possible. His profession allows him to live a slow paced life, as he produces brochures. But his dream job, a brochure made to lure Norwegian tourists to travel to Finland, with it´s almost two hundred-thousand lakes, make everything float for this man, with a - to put it mildly - anxious relation to water. Erlend Loe was proclaimed a genius already with his first novels; Captured by the Woman, Naive. Super and L. Facts about Finland (Fakta om Finland) is characterized by the authors typical humour, but at the same time you can feel an undertow of longing and loneliness in the main character. He fears water and flow, he fears change. Facts about Finland is sovereignly language conscious, unpredictable and entertaining."A novel filled by real Loe-humour. With Facts about Finland, Erlend Loe has left the relatively safe shallows of the generation novel and plunged himself into deeper waters."DAGBLADET"A highly charming story, filled with warm humour and warm irony."UPPSALA TIDNING, Sweden"Facts about Finland is a existential novel filled with deep seriousness, but where elements in language and narrative wakes humour as well as reflection."TØNSBERGS BLAD"His latest book, Facts about Finland, also has a cult status, but here he dears new things. I think it is an interesting move in his authorship."DAGBLADET"Less naïve, just as super."DAGSAVISEN