Utoya - Paperback

by Edoardo Erba (Author), Marco Young (Translator)

I've got goosebumps. One of us. It's horrendous.

July 2011. A far-right terrorist has just massacred sixty-nine people, most of them students attending a Norwegian Labour Party Youth's summer camp on the island of Utoya.

Gunnar and Malin have sent their daughter to the island, and desperately seek contact. On the farm next-door to the perpetrator's, Petter and Inga realise their suspicions about him are well-founded. At Central Command, Alf and Unni must decide on the best course of action in response to the attack.

A searing reflection on the domestic effects of societal trauma, Edoardo Erba's Utoya offers a timely reminder of the threat of far-right extremism, inviting us to consider how tragedy can both bind people together and pull them further apart.

This edition was published to coincide with the UK premiere at London's Arcola Theatre in August 2024.

Author Biography

Edoardo Erba is an Italian playwright, screenwriter, novelist, stage director and university professor (Pavia University, National Academy Silvio D'Amico and Belle Arti University of Rome). He studied at Piccolo Teatro in Milan and at Pavia University. His plays have been performed at Italian festivals (including Venice Biennale, Taormina Film Fest, Montepulciano and Todi Festival) and in Italy's most renowned theaters. Erba has won the most prestigious awards for Italian dramaturgy (Olimpici del Teatro, Riccione, Idi, Candoni and Salerno) and the Robinson Award for his first novel Ami. Marathon, his most famous and successful work, has been translated in 17 languages. The script won the Candoni Award in 1992 and was then represented for the first time in Parma in 1993. After that, the play was staged in London (translation by Colin Teevan), Edinburgh, Wellington (NZ), Sydney, Boston (translation by Israel Horowitz), Barcelona, Buenos Aires, Rio De Janeiro, Zagreb, Sofia, Tel-Aviv, Mumbai, Hong Kong and Tokyo. Erba's play Utoya premiered in the UK at London's Arcola Theatre in August 2024.

Marco Young is a London-based graduate of Bristol Old Vic Theatre School. His theatre credits include My Cousin Rachel for Bath Theatre Royal, Romeo and Juliet and Macbeth for Guildford Shakespeare Company, The Stranger on the Bridge at Tobacco Factory and Salisbury Playhouse, and roles at Theatre503 and The Kings Head. He is originally from Cambridge, and is half-Scottish and half-Italian - in which he is fluent.