The Memoirs of Stockholm Sven

Product Description
The “captivating’’ and “powerful’’ story (Publishers Weekly, starred review) of one man who banishes himself to a solitary life in the Arctic Circle, and is saved by good friends, a loyal dog, and a surprise visit that changes everything, in a novel that is both “ceaselessly brilliant’’ (Adam Johnson, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Orphan Master’s Son) and “pure delight’’ (Christina Baker Kline, #1 bestselling author of Orphan Train)#1 INDIE NEXT PICKLonglisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize\nIn 1916, Sven Ormson leaves a restless life in Stockholm to seek adventure in Svalbard, an Arctic archipelago where darkness reigns four months of the year and he might witness the splendor of the Northern Lights one night and be attacked by a polar bear the next. But his time as a miner ends when an avalanche nearly kills him, leaving him disfigured, and Sven flees even further, to an uninhabited fjord. There, with the company of a loyal dog, he builds a hut and lives alone, testing himself against the elements.\nThe teachings of a Finnish fur trapper, along with encouraging letters from his family and a Scottish geologist who befriended him in the mining camp, get him through his first winter. Years into his routine isolation, the arrival of an unlikely visitor salves his loneliness, sparking a chain of surprising events that will bring Sven into a family of fellow castoffs and determine the course of the rest of his life.\nWritten with wry humor and in prose as breathtaking as the stark landscape it evokes,
The Memoirs of Stockholm Sven is a testament to the strength of our human bonds, reminding us that even in the most inhospitable conditions on the planet, we are not beyond the reach of love.\nReview
“Briskly entertaining . . . I was reminded more than once of Annie Proulx’s
The Shipping News . . . combines a distinctive northerly setting with a cast of likable eccentrics . . . Rather than any creed or belief system, it is Sven’s various friendships, intense but understated, that sustain him and give his life an order and purpose.”―
Ian McGuire, New York Times Book Review\n“Transporting and wholly original . . . this modern-day
Call of the Wild is funny, moving, and ceaselessly compelling.”―
People (Book of the Week)\n“Ceaselessly brilliant as an arctic sun,
The Memoirs of Stockholm Sven illuminates the very nature of human yearning and perseverance. In attempting to inhabit the uninhabitable, one man shows us that no place is inhospitable to the human heart, and in delivering this searing portrait, Nathaniel Ian Miller ascends to the firmament of today’s most exciting young novelists.”―
Adam Johnson, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Orphan Master’s Son\n“Surprisingly humorous, this heartwarming story reminds us that love can reach the iciest depths of our hearts, even in the most inhospitable locations.”―
Kirby Beaton, Buzzfeed\n“Captivating . . . Miller offers a marvelously detailed look at a way of life and a profession practiced in an extreme environment, and though purportedly based on a historical figure, the character’s colorfully rendered experiences are the stuff of powerful dramatic fiction.”―
Publishers Weekly (starred review)\n“Readers will love the beauty and depth of his story . . . A Swedish trapper relates his unique life with insights about friendship, hardship, and solitude.”―
Kirkus (starred review)\n“Miller’s prose is lit by sparks of Sven’s somber humor and descriptive elegance . . . Miller's characterization is exceptional and thoroughly engaging, as are the vividly portrayed island denizens . . . Miller has given [Sven] an imagined life told in his own words in this engrossing fictional memoir.”
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Bethany Latham, Booklist (starred review)\n“A stellar first novel . . . So authentic in both detail and narrative voice that it’s easy to forget it’s not an actual memoir . . . A truly walloping tale of solitude and survival told in visceral detail,