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- ISBN13: 9781583226599
- Condition: New
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Product Description
“A blissfully eccentric, fiction-enhanced memoir. . . . His prose buzzes with wonder, fearlessness and ecstatic ignorance: the sensations of youth. Each chapter is an epic in miniature.”—Hugo Lindgren, The New York Times Magazine“Haunting and glorious . . . Niemi’s finest achievement is to have created a world poised between an adult’s fantastic memories of childhood and a child’s naïve dreams of his future. Graceless sentiments like disillusionment o… More >>
I read this book in Swedish. It is about a boy growing up in Northern Sweden, but anyone who grew up in Sweden will find the book funny. For non-Swedes maybe the book takes on a more absurd tone. I don’t read that much fiction, but I can compare it to film directtor Kusturica’s films. Quite absurd and funny people. So to conclude I think non-Swedes would like the book as well. (There is also a Swedish film of the book but that is a big disappointment.)
Rating: 5 / 5
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This must be one of the funniest books ever written. It repeatedly made be burst out in laughter publicly (in the end I restricted it to the home environment). The deadpan (sisu) Finnish humour is well known to other N-Scandinavians (inhabitants of the Vodka belt) and it is about time that the secret is revealed to the rest of the world. I was waiting for this translation to spread it to overseas friends, and now I hope that the humour of Arto Paasilinna (less transparent but very entertaining) will also be translated (notably ‘A happy man’ and ‘Collective suicide’).
Rating: 5 / 5
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I was sorry to reach the end — I will miss the narrator and his quirky town, relatives, friends and neighbors. The story moves smoothly from reality to fantasy and back. It’s honest, touching, and subtly funny. My recommendation — read this book!
Rating: 5 / 5
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This book is incredibly funny! The opening chapter must be one of the most striking in the history of the novel. Just imagine the main character, on a spiritual trek through the Nepal mountains. He kneels down to reverently kiss a metal plaque with budhist prayer script (he assumes), and promptly freezes his tongue to the metal. There he is, stuck with his rear poised upward, and the experience triggers, Proust-like, a rememberance of having got his tongue attached freezing metal in the far north of Tornedalen, Sweden as a small, disadvantaged working class child. What to do, one asks? Well, in Tornedalen they don’t raise no wimps. He decides, very non-spiritually, that in order to save his sorry Finn rear from certain death of exposure, he is going to have to thaw his tongue, and the only solution seems to be to urinate (on all fours) in his drinking cup and… pour it over his tongue!!! And from there it takes off. The novel continues with a hilarious, sad, poignant, and very REAL story about his young man’s life up until the point of “Nepalese arrest”, and it is always, ALWAYS funny! And how about THAT for an opening chapter!!
Rating: 5 / 5
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After reading the original and trying to share it with my non-Swedish speaking friends, I am delighted to see that it now exists translated into English.
This book is down-right hillarious while also offering an inspired insight into a culture that is, still today, very much a part of northern Sweden. Also, the author’s style is refreshing; Niemi’s vocabulary is rich and vivid.
Indeed, a must read for any reader–regardless of nationality.
Rating: 5 / 5
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