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Chapters (44)
  1. Cover
  2. 1. A Man Called Ove Buys a Computer That Is Not a Computer
  3. 2. (Three Weeks Earlier) A Man Called Ove Makes His Neighborhood Inspection
  4. 3. A Man Called Ove Backs Up With a Trailer
  5. 4. A Man Called Ove Does Not Pay a Three-kronor Surcharge
  6. 5. A Man Called Ove
  7. 6. A Man Called Ove and a Bicycle That Should Have Been Left Where Bicycles Are Left
  8. 7. A Man Called Ove Drills a Hole For a Hook
  9. 8. A Man Who Was Ove and a Pair of His Father’s Old Footprints
  10. 9. A Man Called Ove Bleeds a Radiator
  11. 10. A Man Who Was Ove and a House That Ove Built
  12. 11. A Man Called Ove and a Lanky One Who Can’t Open a Window Without Falling Off a Ladder
  13. 12. A Man Who Was Ove and One Day He Had Enough
  14. 13. A Man Called Ove and a Clown Called Beppo
  15. 14. A Man Who Was Ove and a Woman on a Train
  16. 15. A Man Called Ove and a Delayed Train
  17. 16. A Man Who Was Ove and a Truck in the Forest
  18. 17. A Man Called Ove and a Cat Annoyance in a Snowdrift
  19. 18. A Man Who Was Ove and a Cat Called Ernest
  20. 19. A Man Called Ove and a Cat That Was Broken When He Came
  21. 20. A Man Called Ove and an Intruder
  22. 21. A Man Who Was Ove and Countries Where They Play Foreign Music in Restaurants
  23. 22. A Man Called Ove and Someone in a Garage
  24. 23. A Man Who Was Ove and a Bus That Never Got There
  25. 24. A Man Called Ove and a Brat Who Draws in Color
  26. 25. A Man Called Ove and a Piece of Corrugated Iron
  27. 26. A Man Called Ove and a Society Where No One Can Repair a Bicycle Any More
  28. 27. A Man Called Ove and a Driving Lesson
  29. 28. A Man Who Was Ove and a Man Who Was Rune
  30. 29. A Man Called Ove and a Bender
  31. 30. A Man Called Ove and a Society Without Him
  32. 31. A Man Called Ove Backs Up a Trailer. Again.
  33. 32. A Man Called Ove Isn’t Running a Damned Hotel
  34. 33. A Man Called Ove and an Inspection Tour That Is Not the Usual
  35. 34. A Man Called Ove and a Boy in the House Next Door
  36. 35. A Man Called Ove and Social Incompetence
  37. 36. A Man Called Ove and a Whiskey
  38. 37. A Man Called Ove and a Lot of Bastards Sticking Their Noses In
  39. 38. A Man Called Ove and the End of a Story
  40. 39. A Man Called Ove
  41. A Man Called Ove and an Epilogue
  42. Acknowledgments
  43. About the Author
  44. Copyright

Meanwhile, the neighbors came and went in the row of houses. In the end there had been so many new faces in the doorways of the other row houses that they all merged in a sea of gray. Where before there had been forest, there were only construction cranes. Ove and Rune stood outside their houses, hands obstinately shoved into their trouser pockets, like ancient relics in a new age, while a parade of uppity real estate agents barely able to see over their grapefruit-size tie knots patrolled the little road between the houses and kept their eyes on them—like vultures watching aging water buffaloes. They could hardly wait to move some bloody consultants’ families into their houses, both Ove and Rune knew that very well.

Rune and Anita’s son moved away from home when he was twenty, in the early 1990s. Apparently he went to America, Ove found out from Sonja. They hardly saw him again. From time to time Anita had a telephone call around the time of Christmas, but “he was so busy with his own things now,” as Anita said when she tried to keep her spirits up, even though Sonja could see that she had to hold back her tears. Some boys leave everything behind and never look back. That was all there was to it.

Rune never said anything about it. But to anyone who had known him a long time, it was as if he shrank a couple of inches in the years that followed. As if he sort of crumpled with a deep sigh and never really breathed properly again.

A few years later Rune and Ove fell out for the hundredth time about that collective heating system. Ove stormed out of a Residents’ Association meeting, in a fury, and never returned. The last battle the two men fought was a bit into the noughties when Rune bought one of those automated robotic lawn mowers, which he’d ordered from Asia, and left it to whiz about on the lawn behind the houses. Rune could even remotely program it to cut “special patterns,” Sonja said in an impressed tone of voice one evening when she came home from visiting Anita. Ove soon caught on that this “special pattern” was the habit of that robotic little shit to consistently rumble back and forth all night outside Ove and Sonja’s bedroom window. One evening Sonja saw Ove fetch a screwdriver and walk out the veranda door. Next morning the little robot, quite inexplicably, had driven right into Rune’s pool.

The month after, Rune went into the hospital for the first time. He never bought another lawn mower. Ove did not know himself how their animosity had begun, though he knew very well that it ended there and then. Afterwards it was only memories for Ove, and a lack of them for Rune.