Reviews

• “[Back in the Day] is irresistible. /…/ The tension [Back in the Day] conveys is unrelenting and real. /…/ [Lovrenski] is a writer who put on paper what millions of young people live (…). [Lovrenski’s] peers will understand him and see their experiences reflected [in Back in the Day]. /…/ Lovrenski employs the mode of communication of the youth, imposed by social media. Compact messages in sharp texts that choose the essential, without ambiguity or padding. Each turn of the page feels like scrolling on your cellphone. Every ending brings a reaction, an interaction. Back in the Day is La Haine and Trainspotting, it is the myth and the truth of the fringes. Lovrenski’s language is demanding. You cannot lose its rhythm and you have to respect the slang terminology and essence.”

• “Much of what happens in Back in the Day happens in the language. The words are a Croatian-Somali-Norwegian fireworks display. /…/ There is something effortless about how Lovrenski brings out generally interesting truths in concrete situations. /…/ It’s the incredible energy that emanates from this text that I’m left with. He’s cracked the code. He speaks to everyone. Just as he describes it here is how it was Back in the Day. It’s safe to say from the outset that Oliver Lovrenski is this year’s literary newcomer.”

• “It is an outburst of rare energy and self-awareness on behalf of its own generation. /…/ Due to the language, the fused slang expressions from various cultures, and the book’s fragmented yet intricately woven structure, the entirety behind juicy one-liners becomes nuanced, explosive, and poignantly accurate. /…/ Gripping from the very first sentence. /…/ This kind of debut only arrives once a decade. /…/ As a debut, Back in the Day is exceptional.”

• “Powerful messages from the street. /…/ An exceptional literary talent. /…/ One can tell that this is not just scribbling; there is an overarching plan behind Back in the Day. When Lovrenski has something truly close to his heart, you can really feel his special insight, his literary talent, whether it’s an absent father figure, the longing for a grandmother, the almost successful project of finding a proper girlfriend – or when reality truly sets in, when one of the toughest buddies dies.”

• “Young Oliver Lovrenski’s debut testifies to a truly unique literary musicality. Back in The Day is an impressively confident debut novel. /…/ a nineteen-year-old debut author writing such a well-executed story is not an everyday occurrence.”

• “Like [Yahya] Hassan, [Oliver Lovrenski] portrays an environment that is not exactly overrepresented in Nordic literature, and his last night with the gang is surprisingly charming. /…/ Here, you get to see the young dealers in the novel as regular, vulnerable boys, but what makes the book exceptional is that they are also funny and self-ironic. /…/ In passages where the narrator unknowingly reveals himself, Back in the Day is both genuinely unsettling and gripping.”

• “From the first sentence, this narrative grabs hold of you. /…/ Debutant Oliver Lovrenski (19) has something many authors can envy him for: a highly relevant story from a notorious underground milieu, told at eye level with those it concerns. /…/ Lovrenski’s hyper-realistic portrayal has been poetically crafted into unusually playful literature with humor and wit. It’s brilliantly done. /…/ The text is colloquial, close, and freshly invigorating. Reading aloud from this book is guaranteed to strike a chord with the audience. /…/ Despite the thematic similarities with some of the finest youth portrayals from Oslo, the novel is executed originally and closely tracks the lives of today’s young people. /…/ One of the most impressive aspects is that a 19-year-old can write so intimately about young people who have been let down without the text coming across as bitter. /…/ Back in the Day is an unsentimental portrayal of a brutal reality, told with impressive vitality. It is crystal clear in thought and writing – and simply a sensationally good debut.”

• “In addition, there is another type of oral playfulness, disses from stand-up and bragging from rap, which smoothly blends into the overall straightforward and raw narrative style, small fragments of close memories told in a diary-like written form. /…/ Lovrenski writes with fine touches of humor and love for his characters, in the dark life where he roams around Oslo with his three musketeer friends and gradually ends up further out. /…/ We still recognize the props and backdrops of the underlying story; it is the author’s perspective, linguistic abundance, and effective snapshot scenes that are the assets. These are sharp snapshots from a contemporary Oslo that most of us older folks do not gain insight into – or perhaps that’s why we should read them, so they are not left to themselves?”

• “I can’t recall seeing a debutant receive the kind of attention that Oliver Lovrenski has garnered in a very, very long time. And it’s completely deserved. /…/ What a scorcher of a debut novel! The 19-year-old Lovrenski has burst onto the scene, into bookstores, and into the hearts of readers with tremendous force.”

• “The novel is inspired by Lovrenski’s own life. It is strong, humorous, tender, and heartfelt. Lovrenski, who is still a teenager himself, displays immense literary talent with his impressive creativity, linguistic genius, and the ability to captivate the reader from the very first sentence. Back in the Day is a fantastic contemporary literature from an authentic voice that truly knows what he’s talking about. It’s a novel that’s hard to put down and hard to forget. A novel you simply fall in love with.”

• “A thunderous debut from the edge of the abyss. /…/ Lovrenski displays an extremely receptive capacity for absorption and writes at an energy level rarely seen in contemporary Norwegian literature. /…/ The result is nothing less than an exceptionally exciting debut from a remarkable talent.”

• “The linguistic style in Back in the Day is chaotic, direct, colloquial, and, not least, very effective. /…/ The jargon between [the characters], especially in the first half of the book, causes constant bursts of laughter while reading. /…/ It’s absolutely incredible how Lovrenski manages to depict an entire life of violence in a chapter of just under eight lines. /…/ Lovrenski crafts a multifaceted story with complex characters using remarkably few words. Several of the texts are so rich in undertones that they appear more like poetry than chapters in a novel. Back in the Day is a coming-of-age portrayal that truly affects you. It’s simply an outstanding debut.”

• “[Back in the Day] has attracted great attention for its energy, style, language, and the insight it provides into a world unfamiliar to much of the literary audience. Humor, loyalty, and friendship are central themes. [It is an] exceptional portrayal of an authentic, stylish, and important story about today’s youth in Oslo.”

• “Like Lars Saabye Christensen’s Beatles for a new generation, this is a novel that captures a time in life, in history, and leaves a deep impression on the reader.”

• “The style is frenetic, as befits the lives it describes, but hypnotic rather than exhausting. /…/ Back in the Day can become the kind of novel that the publishing industry so restlessly hunts for: one that makes young men sit down and read.”

• “Sometimes a book reviewer is blown away…  Debut novels like Oliver Lovrenski’s Back in the Day are few and far between. With its unique language and its strong universe, [Oliver Lovrenski] delivers a novel that is simply excellent. /…/ Lovrenski convincingly portrays the harsh dark side. And at the same time, he shows how bright the sunshine can be, which challenged some prejudices, at least those I’ve had. /…/ Lovrenski mixes in several languages and dances around with them.”

• “Back in the Day (…) can be seen as an unintentional fusion of [J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, and Christiane F], but most of all as a prototype of what literature may very well look like in the future.”

• “What ensures [Back in the Day] a protruding place in world literature is first and foremost the writing style. Lovrenski tells this story more successfully than anyone so far with the help of social media language and the modern expression based on digital civilization. /…/ This does not mean that everything else is secondary to his wild rhythm of chaos and aggression. On the contrary, time and time again Lovrenski writes extremely impressive scenes filled with tender feelings.”

• “There’s a drive and clear movement forward in the short, rhapsodic, nearly prosaic text, along with a strong linguistic touch and elegant rhythm. The fast-paced associations make one think of hip hop lyrics. /…/ At times it is astonishingly precise, like when a serious incident becomes one of many. /…/ [That preciseness is] an effective way of illustrating how much of what is happening on our streets only shows up in paragraphs forgotten the following day. /…/ Oliver Lovrenski is a promising writer who has found his literary expression. I am affected; some scenes stick with me. /…/ Back in the Day may be fiction (…) but it actualizes real questions which society should be asking itself every day.”

• “[Back in the Day] is easy to read because the style is not forced, it’s completely natural. /…/ Back in the Day’s biggest quality is that it, unlike similar literature, does not pretend. It doesn’t want to brag, not impress, not sell itself. /…/ It is never sentimental, nor self-aggrandizing. /…/ Lovrenski tells it soberly, and with a large register. [Back in the Day] is an incredibly funny and at the same time very touching novel. There is speed, but there is also room for self-examination. There are doubts, there is uncertainty and shame.”

• “[Back in the Day is] a raw and fascinating story. /…/ Everything is fast paced. There’s shouting. There’s slang, reverse word order as per Kebab Norwegian, and expressions from other languages, so that half of what is said cannot be understood. /…/ You’re annoyed. But you’re also hooked. Moved. /…/ You’re invited into an authentic hell. There is raw honesty, a vulnerability that shines through, an insistent vitality that shines. /…/ [Back in the Day] is a cacophony of colloquial language which sounds like something [Oliver Lovrenski] has transcribed into a dictaphone. Pure and raw speech with energy, humor, and hope, which fights against dystopia.”

• “We must look to Yahya Hassan to find a similar comet in contemporary Scandinavian literature. /…/ [T]he primary force of Back in the Day lies in its language. /…/ There’s no stable, common minority language from which [Oliver Lovrenski] deviates – [Back in the Day] is a big linguistic deviation, with its own form and grammatical conventions. A completely new form of stability, if you will. And it is a novel which liberatingly consistently embraces [Lovrenski’s] generation’s relationship to writing: chat language. /…/ This central stylistic angle works magnificently. /…/ It is the vivid exploration of the fractured surfaces of language which makes Back in the Day such an experience. /…/ Back in the Day is filled with analyses of language’s interaction with reality. Delivered with a naturalness, the text never appears moralizing or constructed. /…/ Back in the Day feels like something new and especially contemporary in Scandinavian literature. A novel with a language and form that is completely in sync with the 2020s. That alone is enough to justify the hype.”

• “Oliver Lovrenski’s [Back in the Day is a] stunningly stylish and superb debut novel. /…/ Back in the Day shows that the answer [to why young boys become criminals] is rarely black or white. /…/ Back in the Day consists of short, galloping prose poems that tell the story of the four boys like nostalgic scenes from a fragmented photo album. The atmosphere is tight and blue, almost like the floating melancholy of an Unknown Artist track. /…/ Lovrenski has a very promising flow. He only uses commas, almost raps, so the writing is breathless, just like that, completely stressed and anxious, you understand, it’s paranoid, it’s trembling, skinless, as if the words were delivered orally or on Messenger, and often with a punchline like a hissing slap (…). Lovrenski writes in the special, youthful street language popularly known as Kebab Norwegian. In Back in the Day, it almost takes on the character of a secret language that binds the boys together and keeps the police’s curious ears at bay. /…/ [I]n Eskil Hein’s flashy translation, Lovrenski’s absolute ear for the nuances of street language comes to its fullest as the wildest literary music. /…/ I have rarely felt so much like one of the boys as throughout [Back in the Day’s] sparklingly good 241 pages. /…/ When literature is great, it opens doors to worlds, languages, ​​and people we often find difficult to understand. Oliver Lovrenski does this with a bang in this phenomenal debut. In short: Back in the Day is an anxiously nerve-wracking, supremely unflinching, and entertaining novel about four teenage boys growing up in a rough Oslo that can and should be read again and again.”