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WINNER OF THE AUGUST PRIZE 2023
I''m fizzing. It seems as if... I love not being his son.
Yes. I can feel it in my whole body. A great thrill - as if an adventure has begun. As if I''m the boy in a book about a boy who finds out his dad is the king of a magical and distant land.
Christmas, 1983. In the aftermath of yet another furious argument, seven-year-old Andrev''s mother lets him in on a secret: his father is, in fact, not his father. And so begins a new kind of childhood, in which fathers come and go, arriving in red Volvos and sweeping his mother off her feet. Fathers can be magicians or murderers, artists or canoe enthusiasts, and, like growing pains, or the weather, they appear uninvited and leave without warning. Fathers are drawn to his mother like moths to a flame - but even she can''t control how they behave.
Vivid and joyful, raw and tender, Bloody Awful in Different Ways is a novel about growing up in the chaos of social change; about how love begins and ends; and above all, about men. Because after all, you learn an awful lot about this strange species when you have seven fathers in seven years.
''Pure joyous storytelling on every page ... A little treasure of a book'' Fredrick Backman
''Outstanding literature. Shamelessly entertaining'' Sydsvenskan<>
About the author
Andrev Walden is an acclaimed Swedish journalist and columnist who has worked for Dagens Nyheter and Aftonbladet. In 2017, he became the first columnist to be nominated for the Swedish Grand Prize for journalism, praised for his ability to ‘find the everyday drama in the big questions’, and to make us ‘laugh and see the world, the family and ourselves in a new and slightly wiser light’. He lives in Stockholm. Bloody Awful in Different Ways is his first novel.
Report
A LITTLE TREASURE OF A BOOK. Hilarious but vulnerable, clever but raw, and pure joyous storytelling on every page. You'll come for the laughs, but you'll stay for the love letter, from a grown man to his boy self, promising everything will be all right Fredrik Backman, author of A Man Called Ove
