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
Patrick clears his throat behind Ove and jumps out of the house on his crutches, nodding at the pile of papers in the man’s arms.
“We’ve also got your bank statements from the last seven years. And all the train and air tickets you’ve bought with your card and all the hotels you’ve stayed in. And all the Web history from your work computer. And all your e-mail correspondence, both work and personal . . .”
The eyes of the man in the white shirt wander from one to the other. His jaws so tightly clamped together that the skin on his face is turning pale.
“Not that there would be anything you want to keep secret,” says Lena with a smirk.
“Not at all,” Patrick agrees.
“But you know . . .”
“. . . once you start really digging into someone’s past . . .”
“. . . you usually find something they’d rather keep to themselves,” says Lena.
“Something they’d rather . . . forget,” Patrick clarifies, with a nod towards the living room, where Rune’s head sticks out of one of the armchairs.
The TV is on in there. A smell of fresh-brewed coffee comes through the door. Patrick points one of his crutches, giving a little poke at the pile of paper in the man’s arms, so that a sprinkling of snow settles over the man’s white shirt.
“I’d especially take a look at that Internet history, if I were you,” he explains.
And then they all stand there. Anita and Parvaneh and that journalist woman and Patrick and Ove and Jimmy and Anders and Adrian and Mirsad and the man in the white shirt and the three nurses, in the sort of silence that only exists in the seconds before all the players in a poker game who have bet everything they’ve got put their cards on the table.
Finally, after an interval that, for all involved, feels like being held underwater with no possibility of breathing, the man in the white shirt starts slowly leafing through the papers in his arms.
“Where did you get all this shit?” he hisses, his shoulders hoisted up around his neck.
“On the InterNET!” rages Ove, abrupt and furious as he steps out of Anita and Rune’s row house with his fists clenched by his hips.
The man in the white shirt looks up again. Lena clears her throat and pokes helpfully at the pile of paper.
“Maybe there’s nothing illegal in all these old records, but my editor is pretty certain that with the right kind of media scrutiny it would take months for your section to go through all the legal processes. Years, maybe . . .” Gently she puts her hand on the man’s shoulder. “So I think it might be easiest for everyone concerned if you just leave now,” she whispers.