Sweet Sweet Revenge LTD
A Novel
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3.7 • 9 Ratings
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
The beloved author of The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared returns with an enchanting adventure that skewers the greed and hypocrisy that dominates our time and holds lessons about what’s truly important in life.
Meet Ole Mbatian Jr., a Maasai warrior; Kevin, his sort-of-son; Jenny, a wronged and penniless ex-wife; and Hugo, an unscrupulous Stockholm ad-man whose company specializes in revenge services.
As Jenny and Kevin seek revenge against the gallery owner who has wronged them, this madcap, funny and philosophical novel takes off on a madcap journey that spans five continents and whirls around a colorful cast of characters, including a goat called Molly and the Pope.
As he’s done in his previous novels, Jonas Jonasson acts as a travel guide through time, drops in a few lessons on colonialism and art history, and pokes fun at capitalism and the artworld, with plenty of laughs along the way.
Translated from the Swedish by Rachel Willson-Broyles
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.
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