Against Normality

Against Normality is a book about breaking up, and breaking away – and the art of returning home. A book about social mobility and belonging to different worlds. And about the demise of the village community, as it gasps for air. Poised and intelligent, Hatterud’s uncomplicated pen produces a work of remarkable poignance about what it means to be human in our present-day world.

Against Normality is an odyssey fraught with obstacles and challenges, littered with failures, but also illuminated by glittering prizes. Gay, upwardly mobile, hampered by clubfoot and spina bifida, Hatterud knows what it means to be set apart from the rest. Falling short against the requirements of normality, the author develops his own peculiar strategies to grow as a person – and gradually develop as a musician, art critic, curator and writer.

Hatterud delivers keen and contemplative observations on the village of his childhood and youth, on disability and growing up, his mother and father, gay culture, the art scene and academic life. Elegant and compelling, Against Normality drills into the seams of structural and personal experience and is, in its every sentence, the work of a consummate reader and writer seeking to navigate in life while being different. It is a triumph about – and for – those who don’t fit. And who among us actually does?