Gunnar (Gunnar)

Bob Hansson

 

Gunnar is a sorrow-filled but also funny story about the loneliness of modern human beings and the desire to be someone others notice.

 

If he hadn’t gotten a new heart, Gunnar would not be around anymore. Gunnar, a 58 year old widower, had led the life of a stonemason with a good conscience. He’d always done his job and he was proud about that, but when his job disappears, he has no idea what to do with himself. At the same time, Gunnar’s new heart is affecting him in a most mystical way. Can it be true that memories from the previous owner of his heart are now seeping into his own memory banks? In spite of his insomnia, his being banned from his workplace, his grief over the death of his wife and especially in spite of his union insurance office, Gunnar defies his bleak rule-bound existence. One day, when his foreman is out sick, he pretends that he is supposed to be coming back to work – defiantly refusing to be degraded.

 

Things keep getting even stranger. A motorcycle appears, then a cucumber, then a hare, and also a growing attraction to Gunnar’s grandchild’s day care giver. But who wants an old, forgotten former stonemason with a pension so small it’s hardly worth talking about?

 

328 pages

 

Rights sold

Denmark: Elg & Co.

Sweden: Wahlström & Widstrand (hard cover) , Pocketförlaget (paperback)

 

Reviews

“…beautiful, warm, happy scenes.”

Expressen

 

“An expressive, sprawling novel, and with his usual charm, he shows his sympathy toward the normal, everyday, easily hurt, very alone human beings of this world.”

Göteborgs-Posten

 

“I like his language, I like his theories, I like Gunnar…Bob Hansson is damned good.”

Elle

 

“Obstinate and almost awkward, without turgid, pompous sentences.”

Dagbladet

 

Watch Bob Hansson present Gunnar (in Swedish)

(By Pocketförlaget)

 

More Bob! More Gunnar! More Swedish!

(By Wahlström & Widstrand, Bob Hansson's publishing house in Sweden)