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.