Johan Harstad: Max, Mischa & Ofenzíva Tet [Max, Mischa & the Tet Offensive] (planned release November 2026)

Max Hansen, a Norwegian stage director currently touring the United States, finds himself unable to sleep during a stop in the Midwest. He wonders whether he’s become an American now. He hasn’t been back home in over twenty years. If it had been up to him, he would never have left his birthplace and would probably have stayed in the suburbs of Stavanger, where he grew up. There, he and his friends had the freedom to do whatever they wanted to, at least for as long as their fathers were out at work on the oil rigs – including playing Tet Offensive games. But in this novel, no one gets what they want.

Max, Mischa & ofenzíva Tet [Max, Mischa & the Tet Offensive] is a novel about how to apply guerrilla warfare to everyday life, a novel about the people who served in the war and the people who protested against it, a novel about hyperrealistic images of washing machines and girls who look like Shelley Duvall, about the sun on Fire Island and the desire to see a draft version of Coppola’s cult film Apocalypse Now. Above all, however, it is a novel that seeks to answer the question everyone who has left their homeland must ask themselves sooner or later: how long do you have to be away for it to be too late to return home?

Johan Harstad (* 1979)

has been a booming voice in contemporary Norwegian literature for almost two decades. He debuted at 22 with a short prose collection, and has since written novels, short stories, and dramas. In 2009, the Norwegian National Theatre engaged him as its first-ever resident playwright, and in 2016, he won the Sultprisen, a prize awarded annually by publisher Gyldendal Norsk Forlag to an “outstanding young voice in Norwegian literature”. Under the pseudonym LACKTR, he is also an award-winning graphic designer, and has himself designed the covers for all of his books.

In Czech, readers have so far only got to know his short story collection Ambulance (Norwegian edition 2002, Czech edition 2013 by Pistorius & Olšanská). Internationally, however, Johan Harstad had already aroused great interest in 2005 with his first novel Buzz Aldrin, What Happened to You in All the Confusion?, the rights to which have been sold in 14 countries, including Germany, France, and the USA. His 2015 novel Max, Mischa & the Tet Offensive has also met with considerable international acclaim. In 2018, it won the European Literature Prize in the Netherlands for the the best translated book of the year, and garnered enthusiasm among Dutch readers and critics. The novel has also been similarly well received in other countries where it has already been published. German reviewers have called it a magnificent literary attempt to understand the age we live in, comparing it to Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, Mann’s The Magic Mountain, and Musil’s The Man Without Qualities.

Harstad’s most recent work is the 2024 novel Under brosteinen, stranden! [Under the Paving Stones, the Beach!].

Daniela Mrázová (ed.): Anthology of Norwegian Poetry

“Poetry is the most extreme language we have,” says Norwegian poet Øyvind Rimbereid. This forthcoming anthology of Norwegian poetry in Czech translation attempts to capture the extreme nature of poetic language and, at the same time, central examples of works by
the most interesting and distinctive personalities writing primarily in the period since 1990.

From committed criticism of consumer society through reflection on the past, ironic commentary on the world around us, explorations of self-identity, playful linguistic experimentation, natural lyricism, factual poetry, and verse fiction to intimate testimony and metapoetics. Reserve a place on your bedside table for these carefully selected authors: writers who have already established themselves within the modern Norwegian poetic canon, writers who speak with new voices, and writers who are just making their promising debut.

While you are busy reading these lines, we are busy reading and selecting the most interesting poems and looking for a fitting title for the anthology!