Fredrik Backman
Fredrik Backman is an author.
Fredrik Backman was a forklift driver and a blogger in Sweden before A Man Called Ove, which publishers were slow on and readers were not. He writes small towns, stubborn people, and grief handled sideways through comedy, and he is unembarrassed about wanting you to cry. The Beartown books turned that instinct on a hockey town and a crime that splits it, which is a harder register than the early novels and probably his best work. He is translated into more than forty languages and remains, structurally, a columnist: short chapters, hard landings.
Books (4)
Where to start with Fredrik Backman
The catalogue has four, none of them Beartown, so this is the gentle half of him. A Man Called Ove is the obvious start and does the grief-under-grumpiness trick before it hardened into a formula. My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry is the strangest and most generous. Britt-Marie was here follows a minor character out of that book and is better than a spin-off has any right to be. Anxious People is the funniest.
Fredrik Backman on CrossBinge
- Companion guide: Cozy & Wholesome: The Complete Comfort Guide