Johan Harstad's debut novel tells the story of Mattias, a thirty-something gardener living in Norway, whose idol is Buzz Aldrin, the second man on the moon: a man willing to stand in Neil Armstrong's shadow in the service of the Apollo 11 mission. Following a series of disasters, Mattias finds himself lying on a rain-soaked road in the desolate, treeless Faroe Islands when a truck approaches. The driver is a troubled man, who stops and makes Mattias an offer that will soon change his life. Using the lunar-like landscape of the Faroe Islands as a backdrop, the novel deals with the characters' attempts at finding a balance between being second best and anonymous without going into total isolation.

Read the review in the Weekend Australian