The Memoirs of Stockholm Sven

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, number one best-selling author of Orphan Train),Number one Indie Next pick Longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel PrizeIn 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.The 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.