A Man Called Ove: A Novel

Fredrik Backman is a Swedish blogger and columnist. He is author of a work of nonfiction, Things My Son Needs to Know About Life, and A Man Called Ove, his first novel, which has sold more than 500,000 copies in its native country and will be published in more than twenty-five languages all over the world. He was reported the most successful author in Sweden in 2013.

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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2014 by Fredrik Backman

Translation © 2013 by Henning Koch

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First Atria Books hardcover edition July 2014.

First published in Great Britain in 2014 by Hodder & Stoughton.

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Interior design by Paul Dippolito

Jacket design by Alan Dingman

Jacket photographs by Getty and Shutterstock

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Backman, Fredrik, 1981–

[Man som heter Ove. English]

A man called Ove : a novel / by Fredrik Backman.—First Atria Books hardcover edition.

pages cm

I. Title.

PT9877.12.A32M3613 2014

839.73’8—dc23 2014015618

ISBN 978-1-4767-3801-7

ISBN 978-1-4767-3803-1(ebook)

Contents

1. A Man Called Ove Buys a Computer That Is Not a Computer

2. (Three Weeks Earlier) A Man Called Ove Makes His Neighborhood Inspection

3. A Man Called Ove Backs Up With a Trailer

4. A Man Called Ove Does Not Pay a Three-kronor Surcharge

5. A Man Called Ove

6. A Man Called Ove and a Bicycle That Should Have Been Left Where Bicycles Are Left

7. A Man Called Ove Drills a Hole For a Hook

8. A Man Who Was Ove and a Pair of His Father’s Old Footprints

9. A Man Called Ove Bleeds a Radiator

10. A Man Who Was Ove and a House That Ove Built

11. A Man Called Ove and a Lanky One Who Can’t Open a Window Without Falling Off a Ladder

12. A Man Who Was Ove and One Day He Had Enough

13. A Man Called Ove and a Clown Called Beppo

14. A Man Who Was Ove and a Woman on a Train

15. A Man Called Ove and a Delayed Train

16. A Man Who Was Ove and a Truck in the Forest

17. A Man Called Ove and a Cat Annoyance in a Snowdrift

18. A Man Who Was Ove and a Cat Called Ernest

19. A Man Called Ove and a Cat That Was Broken When He Came

20. A Man Called Ove and an Intruder

21. A Man Who Was Ove and Countries Where They Play Foreign Music in Restaurants

22. A Man Called Ove and Someone in a Garage

23. A Man Who Was Ove and a Bus That Never Got There

24. A Man Called Ove and a Brat Who Draws in Color

25. A Man Called Ove and a Piece of Corrugated Iron

26. A Man Called Ove and a Society Where No One Can Repair a Bicycle Any More

27. A Man Called Ove and a Driving Lesson

28. A Man Who Was Ove and a Man Who Was Rune

29. A Man Called Ove and a Bender

30. A Man Called Ove and a Society Without Him

31. A Man Called Ove Backs Up a Trailer. Again.

32. A Man Called Ove Isn’t Running a Damned Hotel

33. A Man Called Ove and an Inspection Tour That Is Not the Usual

34. A Man Called Ove and a Boy in the House Next Door

35. A Man Called Ove and Social Incompetence

36. A Man Called Ove and a Whiskey

37. A Man Called Ove and a Lot of Bastards Sticking Their Noses In

38. A Man Called Ove and the End of a Story

39. A Man Called Ove

A Man Called Ove and an Epilogue

Acknowledgments

About the Author