A Man Called Ove
Fredrik Backman, 2012
A grumpy Swedish man with strict rules and a Saab finds his orderly life interrupted by the messy neighbours next door. Funny, tender and sometimes bleak.
Fredrik Backman
Backman writes about stubborn, difficult people and the neighbours who keep knocking anyway. «A Man Called Ove» is the usual place to start: a grumpy man with strict rules and a Saab, and a household next door that won't leave him alone. «My Friends» is the newer one, a teenage vandal and a painting worth more than a life, funnier and just as tender.
Feels like tenderness, wonder and humor.
Start with A Man Called Ove.
Fredrik Backman was a Swedish blogger and freelance journalist before publishing A Man Called Ove, his debut novel, in 2012; it became a film and a bestseller.
The invisible duel that happens across a shop counter.
Another silence, as if two gunmen have suddenly realized they have forgotten to bring their pistols. Ove looks at the box for a long time, as though he’s waiting for it to make a confession. Books by Fredrik Backman
My Friends
Fredrik Backman, 2025
A teenage vandal, a perfect plan, and a painting worth more than a life—Backman’s funniest, most tender voice yet.
Anxious People
Fredrik Backman, 2019
A failed bank robber takes a roomful of apartment-viewing strangers hostage, and the police try to work out who is really trapped.
My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry
Fredrik Backman, 2013
A seven-year-old, her irreverent grandmother, and a stairwell of odd neighbours, bound together by fairy tales and apology letters.
Beartown
Fredrik Backman, 2016
A small forest town pins its future on a junior hockey team, and the people inside it must decide what they owe the place that made them.
Us Against You
Fredrik Backman, 2017
A small hockey town and its rival reckon with the aftermath of a scandal, in a novel about loyalty, fear and what a community will sacrifice to belong.
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