Everything I Don't Remember
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Beschreibung des Verlags
THE TOP TEN INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER
Winner of the August Prize for Fiction
Dazzlingly inventive, witty and mysterious: a writer pieces together the story of a young man's death in an exhilarating narrative puzzle reminiscent of the hit podcast Serial.
A young man dies in a car crash - accident or suicide? An unnamed writer with an agenda of his own sets out to piece together Samuel's story. From friends, relatives and neighbours, a portrait emerges of a loving son, reluctant bureaucrat, contrived poser, loyal friend. But who was Samuel really, and what happened to him? In filling out the contours of his existence, the writer grasps at a fundamental question: how do we account for the substance of a life?
'My books of the year [include] Jonas Hassen Khemiri's enigmatic novel' Joyce Carol Oates
Heartbreakingly sad and laugh-out-loud funny . . . Its chorus of drifters, romantics and cynics stick in the memory, each competing to tell their own truth’ Hari Kunzru
?'Unforgettable. In this non-putdownable puzzle of a story, Khemiri manages to both thrill and break your heart' Gary Shteyngart
'Khemiri's audacious and richly drawn novel pushes the boundaries of literary fiction . . . Beneath the structural pyrotechnics lies a broader story of imposition, appropriation and lack of individual agency: that of the immigrant experience' Lucy Scholes, The National
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Khemiri (Montecore) won Sweden's most prestigious literary honor, the August Prize, for this compelling novel about Samuel, who was born in Sweden but is of North African descent, and whose last day alive is reconstructed by an unnamed narrator who wants to write about the young man for his own introspective purposes. Was Samuel's death in a car crash an accident, suicide, or murder? Through tantalizing fragments, the reader learns of the dead man's various relationships: with Laide, the woman he was dating, who wanted to provide a safe house for abused Muslim women; with Vandad, Samuel's roommate, with whom he had a falling out; and with Samuel's grandmother, who allowed Laide's abused women to live in her house, until somebody burned it down. In this painful novel about youthful optimism gone hopelessly wrong, Khemiri dramatizes such immigration-related issues as failures in elder care, unemployment and dead-end jobs, drug abuse, and racial prejudice.
