Fiction

Muleum

Erlend Loe

We’re crashing. We love you. Do what you want to do. Dad These are the words in a text-message that turns 16-year-old Julie’s life into a catastrophe. Her mum, dad and her older brother, Tom, are killed in a plane crash in Namibia. Julie sits there in the family’s big house in Oslo's West End with Krzysztof, the Polish craftsman, employed to tile the family’s swimming pool. Julie has been advised by «Psycho Geir with the beard» to write a diary, and reluctantly she has to admit that she has benefited from putting her thoughts down on paper. Through the diary we get insight in her state of mind and her experiences after the tragedy. After a failed attempt to commit suicide during a theatre premiere at the high school she attends, Julie takes off, criss-crossing the world in a desperate attempt at confronting dangers and finding herself. She is a angry young woman, rebellious and carrying a death wish, fleeing desperately from the conformity of society. Muleum won the 2010 Grote Jongeren Literatuur Pris, where he was nominated along with amongst others Dave Eggers. "Potent and playful easy read."VG"Muleum is a magnificent little text - painful and sad, but at the same time as funny and verbally sparky as Loe tends to be at his best."DAGBLADET "Entertaining and wise. Erlend Loe shows us that reading about serious topics do not need to be boring."OPPLAND ARBEIDERBLAD"Beautiful, dark, funny and sad."BERGENS TIDENDE"Erlend Loe is Norway´s version of Nick Hornby, only more crazy and funny (crazy fun!). His method of measuring the temperature of the world has given him a cult status - and it is right to do so!"AMELIA, Sweden