Erlend Loe (b. 1969) is a popular Norwegian writer, critic, screenwriter, theater and film director, and winner of numerous national and international awards. Before devoting himself to literature, he worked in a variety of fields: performing on the stage, directing short films and music videos, working in a psychiatric hospital, as a school teacher, as a newspaper critic, and translating his idol Richard Brautigan's Babylon Dreams into Norwegian. He debuted with the novel In the Power of a Woman, which was hailed by critics as 'extraordinarily funny and masterful,' and was successfully adapted into a film in 2008. Loe's second novel, Naive. 'Super'—a straightforward story about very complex things, told from the perspective of a thirty-year-old protagonist—a situation comedy with elements of parable, a hilarious study of the lost meaning of life—was translated into two dozen languages, received with rapture everywhere, including in Russia, became a European bestseller, and made its author a truly iconic figure. This charming and ironically restrained work is akin to a good primitive, 'naive' painting—at first glance, simple and funny, but upon closer inspection, it becomes intelligent and touching, and the details, despite the overall apparent simplicity, are precisely and masterfully executed.