Chapters (44)
- Cover
- 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
- Copyright
Of course, it had started innocently enough, not long after Ove and Sonja came back from Spain and the accident. Ove laid new paving stones in their little garden that summer, whereupon Rune put up a new fence around his. Whereupon Ove put up an even higher fence around his garden, whereupon Rune went off to the building supply store and a few days later started boasting all over the street that he had “built a swimming pool.” That was no bloody swimming pool, Ove raged to Sonja. It was a little splash pool for Rune and Anita’s newborn urchin, that was all it was. For a while Ove had plans to report it to the Planning Department as an illegal construction, but at that point Sonja put her foot down and sent him out to “mow the lawn” and calm himself down. And so Ove did just that, although it certainly did not calm him down very much at all.
The lawn was oblong, about five yards wide, and ran along the backs of Ove’s and Rune’s houses and the house in between, which Sonja and Anita had quickly named “the neutral zone.” No one quite knew what that lawn was for or what function it was expected to fill, but when row housing was put up in those days, some city architect must have got the idea that there had to be lawns here and there, for no other reason than that they looked so very nice in the drawings. When Ove and Rune formed the Residents’ Association and were still friends, the two men decided that Ove should be the “grounds man” and responsible for keeping the grass mowed. It had always been Ove before. On one occasion the other neighbors had proposed that the association should put out tables and benches on the lawn to create a sort of “common space for all the neighbors,” but obviously Ove and Rune put a stop to that at once. It would only turn into a bloody mess and lots of noise.
And as far as that went, it was all peace and joy. At least insofar as anything could be “peace and joy” when men like Ove and Rune were involved.