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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

It takes about forty minutes before any of the nurses finally have the guts to go back into the room. A few moments later a bespectacled young doctor wearing plastic slippers who, in Ove’s view, has the distinct appearance of someone with a stick up his ass, comes into the room and stands dozily by the bed. He looks down at a paper.

“Parr . . . nava . . . ?” He broods, and gives Parvaneh a distracted look.

“Parvaneh,” she corrects.

The doctor doesn’t look particularly concerned.

“You’re listed here as the ‘next of kin,’” he says, glancing briefly at this emphatically Iranian thirty-year-old woman on the chair, and this emphatically un-Iranian Swede in the bed.

When neither of them makes the slightest effort to explain how this can be, other than Parvaneh giving Ove a little shove and sniggering, “Aaah, next of kin!” and Ove responding, “Shut it, will you!” the doctor sighs and continues.

“Ove has a heart problem. . . .” he begins in an anodyne voice, following this up with a series of terms that no human being with less than ten years of medical training or an entirely unhealthy addiction to certain television series could ever be expected to understand.

When Parvaneh gives him a look studded with a long line of question marks and exclamation marks, the doctor sighs again in that way young doctors with glasses and plastic slippers and a stick up their ass often do when confronted by people who do not even have the common bloody decency to attend medical school before they come to the hospital.

“His heart is too big,” the doctor states crassly.

Parvaneh stares blankly at him for a very long time. And then she looks at Ove in the bed, in a very searching way. And then she looks at the doctor again as if she’s waiting for him to throw out his arms and start making jazzy movements with his fingers and crying out: “Only joking!”

And when he doesn’t do this she starts to laugh. First it’s more like a cough, then as if she’s holding back a sneeze, and before long it’s a long, sustained, raucous bout of giggling. She holds on to the side of the bed, waves her hand in front of her face as if to fan herself into stopping, but it doesn’t help. And then at last it turns into one loud, long-drawn belly laugh that bursts out of the room and makes the nurses in the corridor stick their heads through the door and ask in wonder, “What’s going on in here?”

“You see what I have to put up with?” Ove hisses wearily at the doctor, rolling his eyes while Parvaneh, overwhelmed with hysterics, buries her face in one of the pillows.