Johannes Anyuru

Ganadora del Premio August, es una de las novelas suecas más importantes de la última década. Un libro que nos hará reflexionar sobre las sociedades europeas actuales y futuras.
Tres personas entran en una librería e interrumpen con un disparo la presentación de un controvertido artista, famoso por sus dibujos sobre el profeta Mahoma. El pánico estalla y todos los asistentes son tomados como rehenes. Pero uno de los tres atacantes, una joven cuya tarea es filmar la violencia, tiene un secreto que puede cambiarlo todo. Dos años después, esta mujer anónima invita a un famoso escritor a visitarla en la clínica psiquiátrica donde reside y comparte con él una historia increíble: ella asegura venir del futuro. Merecedora de un éxito formidable de crítica y ventas, esta palpitante novela de Johannes Anyuru envuelve al lector en una historia sobre esperanza y desesperanza en la Europa de hoy, sobre amistad y traición, y sobre el teatro del terror y el fascismo.… (mais)

This book is an excellent story looking at immigrants and their children, religion, Swedish society, Syrian terrorist camps, time travel, radicalization, internment, hate, religion, and more. A little confusing as it jumps between character, place, and time--more so because I read an e-galley with no indications other than content (and my total confusion) that the place/time/narrator had changed. I think this might have been a 5-star read for me if I had had those breaks and not had to read back repeatedly to find the change. Of course, maybe it's not easy to tell in the print version either. I don't know.

Even with my confusion, this book is fantastic. There are 3 stories being told, and they each converge with another, but how and when is not always clear until suddenly it is. I wish I had someone to discuss this with! I love dystopias, and I love literary fiction that takes on modern topics. This novel combines those two.
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A few years after a terrorist attack that goes strangely, with one of the terrorists killing another, a Swedish Muslim poet/author is contacted by that woman, who is in a psychiatric facility. She wants to meet him.

He knows about the attack, all Swedes do. The attack itself is based on the Charlie Hedbo attack in France. But one of the terrorists--a teenage girl--stopped it. He knows her story--she is actually a Belgian girl who had been to Syria, was rescued, and then fled to Sweden. But this is not who she says she is. This girl claims to be from the future (15-20 years in the future), and is herself unclear how or why she ended up in another body. But she had to stop the attack because it caused the restrictions and Muslim internment camps of the dystopian Sweden that she grew up in.

Does the narrator believe her or her official diagnosis of schizophrenia? What does he do? Does the reader believe her?
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Thanks to Two Lines Press and Edelweiss Plus for providing me with an e-galley.… (mais)