Popular Music from Vittula: A Novel
- ISBN-10
- 1583226591
- ISBN-13
- 9781583226599
- Category
- Fiction
- Pages
- 240
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2004-10-05
- Publisher
- Seven Stories Press
- Author
- Mikael Niemi
Description
Popular Music from Vittula tells the fantastical story of a young boy's unordinary existence, peopled by a visiting African priest, a witch in the heart of the forest, cousins from Missouri, an old Nazi, a beautiful girl with a black Volvo, silent men and tough women, a champion-bicyclist music teacher with a thumb in the middle of his hand—and, not least, on a shiny vinyl disk, the Beatles. The story unfolds in sweltering wood saunas, amidst chain thrashings and gang warfare, learning to play the guitar in the garage, over a traditional wedding meal, on the way to China, during drinking competitions, while learning secret languages, playing ice hockey surrounded by snow drifts, outsmarting mice, discovering girls, staging a first rock concert, peeing in the snow, skiing under a sparkling midnight sky. In the manner of David Mitchell’s Black Swan Green, Mikael Niemi tells a story of a rural Sweden at once foreign and familiar, as a magical childhood slowly fades with the seasons into adult reality.
Get the book
Other editions
Similar books
-
Popular Music
By Mikael Niemi‘A wonderfully warm tale of weddings, funerals, marathon sauna contests – and the incomparable thrill of your first kiss, from “the Nick Hornby of the Arctic”.’ Marina Warner, Sunday Times
-
To Cook a Bear: A Novel
By Mikael NiemiAN INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER | A SUNDAY TIMES UK BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR | SHORTLISTED FOR THE CWA CRIME FICTION IN TRANSLATION AWARD “So much to relish here . . . and the writing is just lovely!” —Diane Setterfield, New York Times ...
-
The Music Lesson: A Novel
By Katharine Weber"I look at my face in the mirror and it seems far away, less real than hers." The woman she describes is the subject of the stolen Vermeer of the novel's title.
-
Highway 61 Revisited: The Tangled Roots of American Jazz, Blues, Rock, & Country Music
By Gene SantoroIn Highway 61 Revisited, acclaimed music critic Gene Santoro says the answer is jazz--not just the musical style, but jazz's distinctive ambiance and attitudes.
-
Nowhere Man
By Aleksandar HemonThese heartrending stories bear the unmistakable mark of an important new international writer.
-
In Conversation: A Writer's Guidebook
By Mike Palmquist, Barbara WallraffThe second edition of this approachable and affordable guidebook provides even more help for the kinds of writing students do in college, with new robust support for multilingual writers, new coverage of analytical writing, and a new ...
-
The Beauty and the Sorrow: An Intimate History of the First World War
By Peter Englund, Peter GravesThe field hospital at which Sarah is working is situated in the city's main concert hall and has rapidly filled with wounded Belgian soldiers. She writes in her diary: A hundred beds all filled with men in pain give one plenty to think ...
-
The Year of the Hare: A Novel
By Arto PaasilinnaHe cautiously crept into the side aisle and saw the hare sitting up on its hind legs at the other end: a charming creature in a graceful pose. “Kitty, kitty, kitty!” he coaxed, but the hare didn't trust the invitation: the rector was in ...
-
Swedish Mentality
By Åke DaunAre Swedes truly shy, unemotional, conflict-avoiding, melancholy, and dour? Swedish Mentality, the English translation of the hugely successful book published in Sweden in 1989, considers the reality behind the myth.
-
A National Joke: Popular Comedy and English Cultural Identities
By Andy MedhurstDavies, Christie (1996) Ethnic Humor Around the World. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Davies, Russelled. (1994) The Kenneth Williams Letters. London: Harper Collins. Davis, Murray S. (1993) What's So Funny?