A girl goes with her biology teacher on a journey to a Yugoslavia at war. A TV reporter is unable to forget the vision of a woman’s dead body in the snow. A playwright is hiding a crime in his most famous play. In Going Underground, stories of contagious loneliness, loving parasites, fading teachers and crimes against humanity are woven together in a surprising manner.

Mikkel Bugge’s first novel is filled with playful expeditions into a world of transboundary science and warped myths. On a deeper level it might be about the dark holes in the stories we don’t tell each other, and the black lumps that are left inside us.

Go Under Ground is a story about those who go under and those who go on.

Praise for Go Under Ground:

”Bugge exhibits an amazing exuberance and ingenuity through his numerous digressions, whims, conspiracy theories and onsets. The conspiracy theories are delightful, and the background stories are peculiar enough to make them believable”
Dagens Næringsliv

“Compelling fabrication oozing of narrative joy and devil-may-care … A language filled so entirely with body and meat, sleaving me exhausted after reading it, with only one thought on my mind: ”What have I just experienced?” Bugge associates his way here and there with impressive speed, and pours pranks out from his vault of creativity. Conspiracy theories and devil-may-care oozes from it. Breathlessly, I keep up … Because of his infectious enthusiasm”
Dagbladet

“Bugge shows us the virility and strength of the novelistic form by combining realism with intellectual and conspiratory deep diving, both with and without a diving suit. What a talent!”
Adresseavise

“Mikkel Bugge writes with a level of ambition, and with a self-confidence that is a rarity in first-time novelists […]Mikkel Bugge digs into the novelistic toolbox so deeply that he qualifies to be on the curriculum in Literary Studies.”
NRK

“a talented writer that we should follow attentively. His recent novel Going Underground is permeated by talent. It is a daring novel in the sense of its literary task, composition and perspective … Most impressive to me is the secure grasp the writer has of his material … an abundant read.”
Tønsbergs Blad

”a dark saga that remains both easy and enjoyable to read. The reason is the author’s unquestionable writing talent that carries him through both philosophizing gravity, and flippancy and jest. At the same time the fearless gaze and almost nonchalant energy of the text uncovers Bugge’s talent to be of a calibre that, if he knows how to mind it, can bring forth a first class contemporary chronicler. …the reader is happily carried away, incessantly inspired by the vitality of Bugge’s language, the unabashed insolence of his textual leaps and the consequence of his vision. This will be interesting to follow!”
5/6 stars,VG

”a peculiar novelistic construction and an intricate blend of single stories, essayistic reflections, fabulations and factual snippets, as well as much agility, that all together gather around themselves in a perfect novelistic intrigue. … Mikkel Bugge adeptly gathers lots of story fragments, fairy tales, debate contributions, fantasies and short stories, a number of people’s intertwined and complicated lives, all into one novel. He does this outstandingly.”
Stavanger Aftenblad

”a shiningly well-written, intelligent, creative, humoristic, and appropriately insane novel. It is parodical, playful, ironic, and lively in a perfectly lovely postmodern manner. Bugge cuts and pastes, he reads and writes, and he manages to compose a text that brings out the great pleasure of reading in me. Quite simply fantastic… Witty, well-written and worthy.”
Nordlys