Montecore — Jonas Hassen Khemiri

He has been hailed as one of the greatest writers of his generation in Sweden, and now we have the first of his novels to be translated into English: a luminous mock-historical epic about a Tunisian immigrant in Sweden who may or may not be the author's own father.

Papa is the superhero of Montecore, a world-famous photographer whom we meet on the first page, pacing up and down the terrace of his luxurious Manhattan loft. How, we might wonder, did a dirt-poor Tunisian orphan achieve such cosmic success? And how is it that Jonas doesn't know? The answers begin to form when Kadir, Papa's best friend from the old days, starts writing long letters to Jonas in Stockholm, telling him about his father's youth in Tunisia and how he became famous. Jonas writes back with memories of his own childhood with Papa in Sweden, and, gradually, their curious, passionate letters create two interlinked but jaggedly different faces of a vanished man.

Witty, dazzlingly inventive, with a heartbreaking storyteller's gift, Montecore marks the debut in English of a blazing international talent.