Back in the Day Paperback by Oliver Lovrenski

Product Details

• Publisher: Penguin UK (2026-07-28)
• Language: English
• Paperback: 256 pages
• ISBN-13: 9781405968157
• Item Weight: 181.44 grams
• Dimensions: 19.56 x 12.7 x 1.55 cm

Taut, lyrical and utterly gripping - the internationally award-winning and bestselling debut

A fizzing headrush of a novel about four boys coming of age on the deprived outskirts of Oslo

'A gut punch of a debut [in] hurricane prose' Times Literary Supplement

'Raw and unfiltered, I was hooked from the very first page' Service95

Last night i got woke up by marco ringing, and he was crying, he said, he died ivor, he died, and i didnt need to hear who to know, i just hung up.

Ivor and Marco have been getting high since they were thirteen, started dealing at fourteen, by fifteen they were carrying knives. At sixteen years old, they hurtle from one trip to the next, one fight to the next, always watching their backs. Ivor dreams of getting out - finishing school, becoming a lawyer, marrying the girl he loves from the corner shop - but the path he's on only leads one way.

In flashes of firecracker prose, shot through with rare empathy, irrepressible wit and gut-punch pathos, Oliver Lovrenski gives voice to young men growing up in a brutal and chaotic world.

WINNER of the Oslo City Artist Prize and the Norwegian Booksellers Prize

SHORTLISTED for the Brage Award and the Tarjei Vesaas Debut PrizE

SHORTLISTED for the Oxford-Weidenfeld Prize

LONGLISTED for the European Literature Prize

About the Author

Oliver Lovrenski has a Croatian background and he grew up in Norway. His debut novel, Back in the Day, was an instant number-one bestseller when it was published in Norway in 2023. It won the Oslo City Artist Prize, Norwegian Bookseller Prize (making Lovrenski the youngest winner in the prize’s seventy-five-year history) and was shortlisted for the Brage Award and the Tarjei Vesaas Debut Prize. The Norwegian edition is now in its eighth print run. The English translation by Nichola Smalley will be published in hardback in 2025.