Matias Faldbakken
Unfun
Scandinavian Misanthropy #3

Five years after Macht und Rebel, Matias Faldbakken returns with Unfun - Scandinavian Misanthropy III, drawing his Scandinavian Misanthropy trilogy to an explosive close through a discussion of violence and its ultimate consequence – death. Using the dramaturgy of the rape/revenge flicks of the 70s as a framework for his narrative, Faldbakken cooks up a grotesquely hilarious and challenging story about the crew around the online slasher game Deathbox, at the center of which are the “violence intellectual” Slaktus and his former girlfriend and victim Lucy, an anarchist who embodies the horror film’s Final Girl trope. Problematizing concepts of oppression, freedom, and power in different contexts, Faldbakken lets Lucy mete out revenge on her oppressors in a narrative littered with references to popular culture, which bears Faldbakken’s trademark of being at once seriously disturbing and highly entertaining.

Sex, violence and drugs – no one can write about it with such force as Matias Faldbakken.

Vanity Fair, Germany

Masterful. With Unfun, Abo Rasul – the pen name of conceptual artist Matias Faldbakken – completes one of contemporary Scandinavian literature’s most important projects.

Information, Denmark

Matias Faldbakken

Ivar Kvaal

Acclaimed Norwegian artist Matias Faldbakken (b. 1973), unanimously hailed as the freshest new voice to emerge in Norwegian literature during the past decade, made his literary debut in 2001, with the much praised and award-winning The Cocka Hola Company - Scandinavian Misanthropy I. Two years later, it was followed by the equally critically acclaimed and fervidly debated Macht und Rebel - Scandinavian Misanthropy II. In Spring 2008, Matias Faldbakken brought the trilogy to a close with Unfun - Scandinavian Misanthropy III, thereby completing one of the most exciting and original literary projects in contemporary Scandinavian fiction. The Hills is Faldbakken’s first novel in nine years and the very first he writes under his own name.

Rights sold to

Denmark, Lindhardt og Ringhof
Finland, Johnny Kniga
Germany, Heyne
Italy, Mondadori
Norway, Cappelen Damm
Slovenia, Didakta
Spain, Suma (World Spanish)