Sweet Sweet Revenge Ltd.
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
The brand-new adventure from the beloved author of The Hundred Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared.
Victor Alderheim has a lot to answer for. Not only has he heartlessly tricked his young ex-wife, Jenny, out of her art gallery inheritance, but he has also abandoned his son, Kevin, to die in the middle of the Kenyan savanna.
It doesn’t occur to Victor that Kevin might be rescued and adopted by a Maasai medicine man, or that he might be expected to undergo the rituals expected of all new Maasai warriors – which have him running back to Stockholm as fast as you can say circumcision without anaesthetic.
Back in Stockholm, Kevin’s path crosses with Jenny’s – and they have an awful lot to talk about, not least a shared desire to get even with Victor. So it’s convenient when they run into a man selling revenge services, who has an ingenious idea involving Victor’s cellar, a goat, some forged paintings, four large boxes of sex toys, and a kilo of flour …
Reviews
‘This novel zips along’ Sunday Times
‘In the first chapters of Sweet Sweet Revenge Ltd there’s enough plot for several novels… Jonas Jonasson, best known for The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared, is a wildly inventive writer, often funny, who stuffs his bonkers but entertaining story with art, politics and romance, and a tongue-incheek meditation on the philosophy of getting even. Great fun.’ The Times
‘Jonas Jonasson creates hilarity out of brilliantly absurd plots, whether it is a 100-year-old man escaping through an old folk’ home window, or a South African peasant girl who saves the King of Sweden. His latest unlikely hero is Kevin who is abandoned by his callous father on the Kenyan savannah in the expectation he will be eaten by lions…Add a crooked art dealer, a lazy Swedish policeman, an ophthalmologist whose wife ditched him for a urologist, and we are set for delicious Jonasson mayhem’ Daily Express
‘A glorious romp which confirms Jonas Jonasson’s status as the most brilliant comic novelist alive’ Daily Mirror
‘So entertaining, completely crazy and very quirky. This is why I love reading his books, they are so different, and unique’ 5 Star NetGalley Review
‘This writer pushes all my buttons! The story is insane, bonkers, highly inventive, surreal, quirky … highly unusual and very likeable’ 5 Star NetGalley Review
‘Jonasson's novels never fail to bring a smile to my face. Sweet Sweet Revenge Ltd was just the joy I was expecting and a fun adventure with Jonasson's latest unlikely characters’ 5 Star NetGalley Review
About the author
Jonas Jonasson was a journalist for the Expressen newspaper for many years. He became a media consultant and later on set up a company producing sports and events for Swedish television. He sold his company and moved abroad to work on his first novel. Jonasson now lives on the Swedish island Gotland in the Baltic Sea.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A revenge scheme goes hilariously awry in this zany if glib farce from Jonasson (The Accidental Further Adventures of the Hundred-Year-Old Man). Swedish white nationalist Victor connives to inherit a wealthy art dealer's fortune by marrying his much younger daughter, Jenny Alderheim. First, Victor flies his Black 18-year-old son, Kevin (born to one of his regular sex workers) to Kenya and abandons him there. Ole Mbatian, a prominent Maasai medicine man, adopts Kevin and tutors him in traditional skills. Kevin shows aptitude, but he returns to Sweden to avoid circumcision; there, he falls in love with Jenny, newly divorced from Victor. Kevin and Hugo Hamlin, a former adman who runs a business offering revenge for petty grievances, hatch a scheme to implicate Victor in art forgery, drug use, and sexual deviancy. Then Ole comes looking for Kevin, and as the three try to bring Victor to justice, their mission is complicated by cultural miscommunications, incompetent police detectives, and Kevin and Jenny's guilelessness. The jokes can feel a bit lazy, particularly when they come at the expense of Ole's unfamiliarity with contemporary European culture, though Jonasson manages to keep the reader invested in the revenge campaign. There's not much nuance, but it's still a page-turner.