A Man Called Ove cover

A Man Called Ove

by Fredrik Backman

A miserable man is interrupted from dying by his neighbors.

For you if

you've ever mistaken someone's anger for their whole personality

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Ove is 59, recently widowed, and determined to die. His new neighbors keep interrupting. Backman uses a comedy of Swedish neighborhood life to dispatch from inside grief, loneliness, and the specific Swedish variety of stubborn dignity. The novel is warmer than it has any right to be given its premise, and more honest about male emotional life than most books that try harder. A dispatch about how community happens to people who don't want it and need it desperately.

Where This Book Lives

Setting
Sweden • Scandinavia
Voice
Written by a Swedish author

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