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  • Published: 28 May 2018
  • ISBN: 9781405930208
  • Imprint: Michael Joseph
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 496
  • RRP: $22.99

Beartown

From the New York Times bestselling author of A Man Called Ove and Anxious People




A dazzling, profound novel about a small town with a big dream and the price required to make it come true from international bestseller Fredrik Backman

Beartown is a small town in a large Swedish forest.

For most of the year it is under a thick blanket of snow, experiencing the kind of cold and dark that brings people closer together - or pulls them apart.

Its isolation means that Beartown has been slowly shrinking with each passing year. But now the town is on the verge of an astonishing revival. A bright new future is just around the corner.

Until the day it is all put in jeopardy by a single, brutal act.

It divides the town into those who think it should be hushed up and forgotten, and those who'll risk the future to see justice done. At last, it falls to one young man to find the courage to speak the truth that it seems no one else wants to hear.

With the town's future at stake, no one can stand by or stay silent. Everyone is on one side or the other.

Which side would you be on?

  • Published: 28 May 2018
  • ISBN: 9781405930208
  • Imprint: Michael Joseph
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 496
  • RRP: $22.99

About the author

Fredrik Backman

Fredrik Backman is a Swedish blogger, columnist and author. He is the Number One New York Times bestselling author of A Man Called Ove, and top ten bestsellers My Grandmother Sends Her Regards and Apologises and Britt-Marie Was Here, as well as a novella, And Every Morning the Way Home Gets Longer and Longer. His books are published in more than thirty-five countries and he has sold over seven million copies. The Scandal - published as Beartown in the US - is being adapted for TV by the team behind The Bridge. Fredrik lives in Stockholm, Sweden, with his wife and two children.

Also by Fredrik Backman

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Praise for Beartown

Praise for A Man Called Ove

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Surrounded by impenetrable forests, it recreates the stifling atmosphere of a dying community. This is a mature, compassionate novel.

Sunday Times

A kind of problem play that moves extremely skilfully near the melodramatic without derailing. Its originality is substantial and the book credibly conveys the dual faces of everyday life. An impressive novel, like no other

BTJ, Sweden

A story about families, about friendship and loyalty, inequality, female vulnerability, male back-slapping, and parenthood ... No person's story is too little to be told, Backman includes them all. A novel with a big heart

Jönköpings-Posten, Sweden

A warm and tender story about love, loss and second chances, peppered with memorable characters, wonderful set pieces and some beautifully black humour. Ove is a joy from start to finish

Gavin Extence, author of The Universe versus Alex Woods

An uplifting, life-affirming and often comic tale of how kindness, love and happiness can be found in the most unlikely places

Sunday Express

As popular Swedish exports go, Backman is up there with ABBA and Stieg Larsson.

The New York Times Book Review

Backman can tickle the funny bone and tug on the heart strings when he needs to, and is a clever enough storyteller to not overindulge in either

Independent

Backman is a masterful writer, his characters familiar yet distinct, flawed yet heroic. . . There are scenes that bring tears, scenes of gut-wrenching despair, and moments of sly humor. . .Like Friday Night Lights, this is about more than youth sports; it's part coming-of-age novel, part study of moral failure, and finally a chronicle of groupthink in which an unlikely hero steps forward to save more than one person from self-destruction. A thoroughly empathetic examination of the fragile human spirit, Backman's latest will resonate a long time.

Kirkus Reviews

Delightful ... the perfect holiday read

Evening Standard

Friday Night Lights for Swedes

O Magazine

I wasn't sure I would love a novel centred on hockey - but as with Friday Night Lights this is actually a story about people - about strength and tribal loyalty and what we unwittingly do when trying to show our boys how to be men. I utterly believed in the residents of Beartown, and felt ripped apart by the events in the book

Jojo Moyes, bestselling author of Me Before You

It's warm, funny, and ultimately almost unbearably moving

Daily Mail