Johan Harstad

At the age of 22, Johan Harstad made his debut with the short prose collection From Here on In You Just Get Older (2001) and in the ensuing year, his critically acclaimed short story collection Ambulance followed. His first novel, Buzz Aldrin, What Happened to You in All the Confusion? was released in 2005 and has since been distributed in 14 countries. A miniseries based on the book was aired on NRK in 2010 and theatrical versions of the novel have been staged in the Netherlands, Belgium, and the UK. Harstad has also written several plays and in 2009 he was employed as house playwright at the National Theater in Oslo. For the staging of Etc. at the National Theater, Harstad was awarded the Ibsen Prize. In 2017 he received the Hunger (Sult) Prize, awarded to “young, eminent” authors, and in the subsequent year he earned the European Literature Prize for the Dutch translation of his 1100-page novel Max, Mischa & the Tet Offensive, which has received rave reviews in Norway, Denmark, and the Netherlands. His only young adult novel thus far, the sci-fi thriller DARLAH, was named best Norwegian young adult novel of all time by newspaper Dagbladet in 2014.