Gud en bog mand! En utrolig intens beskrivelse af nutiden, fortiden, fremtiden. Om muslimer og terrorangreb og et vesten, et skandinavien i krise. Om dommedagsfortællinger, om enkelte begivenheder der kan afspore en katastrofal tidlinje. Om mennesker der bliver plukket ud af deres liv og tortureret ind i et nyt. Om skæbner og historier og hvem vi er som mennesker, som nationer, som beboere i et land.
En fortælling om snevejr i juni og optrævlende fremtider, der forhåbentligt aldrig finder sted, men som en forkert handling kan sætte igang.
Et sprog indviklet i stille desperation, i uvirkelighed og næsten alt for virkelig virkelighed.
En læseoplevelse der fløj afsted, sprang rundt i tid, sted og fortæller, men altid var skarp og ubærlig.

This book is an excellent story looking at immigrants and their children, religion, Swedish society, Syrian terrorist camps, time travel, radicalization, internment, hate, religion, and more. A little confusing as it jumps between character, place, and time--more so because I read an e-galley with no indications other than content (and my total confusion) that the place/time/narrator had changed. I think this might have been a 5-star read for me if I had had those breaks and not had to read back repeatedly to find the change. Of course, maybe it's not easy to tell in the print version either. I don't know.

Even with my confusion, this book is fantastic. There are 3 stories being told, and they each converge with another, but how and when is not always clear until suddenly it is. I wish I had someone to discuss this with! I love dystopias, and I love literary fiction that takes on modern topics. This novel combines those two.
———
A few years after a terrorist attack that goes strangely, with one of the terrorists killing another, a Swedish Muslim poet/author is contacted by that woman, who is in a psychiatric facility. She wants to meet him.

He knows about the attack, all Swedes do. The attack itself is based on the Charlie Hedbo attack in France. But one of the terrorists--a teenage girl--stopped it. He knows her story--she is actually a Belgian girl who had been to Syria, was rescued, and then fled to Sweden. But this is not who she says she is. This girl claims to be from the future (15-20 years in the future), and is herself unclear how or why she ended up in another body. But she had to stop the attack because it caused the restrictions and Muslim internment camps of the dystopian Sweden that she grew up in.

Does the narrator believe her or her official diagnosis of schizophrenia? What does he do? Does the reader believe her?
———
Thanks to Two Lines Press and Edelweiss Plus for providing me with an e-galley.

I'm that sucker for time loops and/or alternate realities that gets pretty miffed when they're handled poorly. I'm SO far from miffed. I'm touched and charmed, even.

I've attempted a review free of spoilers, but there's not much that I could offer to an educated guest that wouldn't bruise this apple.

This book gave me everything I could want: a mystery; a family saga; a bit of time travel; a dystopian alternate reality; a touch of complexity to sustain my interest; and all the fear, loneliness, love, and compassion in the world.

Yeah, it’s a lot. Like all the best books are.

This book is set in a Sweden similar to the one we know, but harsher. Written by Johannes Anyuru, who was born to a Swedish mother and an Ugandan-refugee father, the story takes on the ugliness of terrorism and anti-immigrant nationalism with gorgeous prose and fantastic use of speculative science fiction.

It begins in a bookstore. (You had me at hello.)

Goodreads synopsis: “In the midst of a terrorist attack on a comic book artist famous for demeaning drawings of the prophet Mohammed, one of the attackers, a young woman, has a sudden premonition that something is wrong, changing the course of history. Two years later, this unnamed woman invites a famous writer to visit her in the criminal psychiatric clinic where she's living. She then shares with him an incredible story--she is a visitor from an alternate future. Despite discrepancies that make the writer highly skeptical, he becomes increasingly fascinated by her amazing tale: in her dystopian future, any so-called "anti-Swedish" citizens are forced into a horrific ghetto called The Rabbit Yard. As events begin to spiral and the author becomes more and more implicated in this woman's tale, he comes to believe the unbelievable: she's telling the truth.”

Yes, this book deals with difficult and dark subject matter. But it is told in a compelling narrative, one that offers multiple points of view and balances that darkness with random kindnesses and deep family bonds.

And the ending! The final revelation of this book *killed* me. I saw that it was coming, but that did nothing to stop the triumph and hope I felt when it was delivered.