In this fourth novel about the protagonist Tom, we meet him more than 30 years after he stormed through the streets of Paris on the last page of Magenta (1997). Tom is now 56 years old and hasn’t set foot in Norway since he signed on a ship in Blackfoot (1995). In the summer of 1997 he walks across the border from Finland, with a ship’s-sack over his shoulder and sandals made from car tyres on his feet. In Oslo he lives in a hospice, delivers newspapers, and gets to know the publishing world through the notebooks of his former teacher Flågvitet. But Tom can’t seem to fit into Norway’s contemporary society. 

The Forerunner was published posthumously.