Avoid the Void: A Struggle for Decency: A Journey from a Soviet Asylum to Paradise Forgotten (Paperback or Softback). This item is unavailable.Avoid the Void: A Struggle for Decency: A Journey from a Soviet Asylum to Paradise Forgotten (Paperback or Softback)

""George wanted me to play the spy game. No dramatic cases, just find out if I was followed on the street, how the mailboxes functioned, checking the monitoring of rooms etc., and for me it was just a bit too much The Hardy Boys. And I had not even read them.""

In 1970 a young Norwegian student entered the Soviet Union to take action against violations of human rights. He was arrested and sentenced to one year in a labour camp. Here is the story of what he experienced, on the internal and external level, behind the Iron Curtain.

Gunnar Gjengset is both a merited and scandalized scholar, a highly respected and satirical aphoristic with his own column in leading Norwegian newspapers for more than 20 years. Although his life story is thrilling, there is also ample room for humor and caustic descriptions of life in Academia, High Culture -  and the gutter.

After having been challenged by a possible ADD-diagnosis, Gunnar Gjengset understood that he had to take control over an escalating abuse of alcohol, before alcohol took control over his life. Quitting is easy, the quest is to cope with the void that threatens the mind as a black hole. He therefore developed a list for surviving, a day-to-day schedule for how to challenge the boozing.

First you have to admit that there is a problem, and then you have to invest one year of your lifetime.

But with a little help from your own will:

Here is the manual for how to Avoid the Void.

Gunnar Hauk Gjengset is a Norwegian researcher and author, who received worldwide attention when, in January 1970, he was arrested in the Soviet Union while demonstrating against the Breznjev regime. Gjengset was sentenced to one year in a criminal camp, but was released after international pressure for his detention in a criminal asylum. Gjengset is a Doctor of Philosophy in Literature from the University of Umea, and has been a researcher on both children's upbringing, and on the medias.  He has written several books, including a biography of Gustav Vigeland, the world famous Norwegian sculptor. He also writes his own daily column of aphorisms in one of the major Norwegian newspapers.