Stockholm
A Novel
Published on 7. December 2023
Book
Hardback
384 pages
978-0-06-331081-0 (ISBN)
Description
"Hilarious, refreshing, tightly plotted, and vividly written. An irresistible read."-Jonas Jonasson, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out The Window And Disappeared
"A seriously funny take on death and dying." -Kirkus Reviews, starred review
An ingeniously plotted dark comedy by Noa Yedlin, "a master at tone" (Kirkus Reviews, starred review) about aging and friendship following a tight-knit circle of seniors as they attempt to hide the death of one of their best friends so he can win the Nobel Prize for Economics.
Avishay is up for the Nobel Prize for Economics. There's just one problem-he's dead. His four closest friends agree that the well-earned prize must stay within his grasp, and so conspire to conceal Avishay's corpse until the committee's announcement. The potential of a glorious legacy for their late friend - and by extension, for them all - is only a mere eight days away. What could go wrong?
Each member of the quartet has their own motive for the scheme. Zohara, Avishay's longtime secret lover, needs her widowhood acknowledged through an inheritance. Amos, a less successful academic than his late friend, is proving he can overcome his jealousy. Insecure magnate Yehuda needs the association to promote his own upcoming book. And Nili, a divorcee chafing against her grandmotherly expectations, thrills at the adventure.
Their plan starts out simple: turn up the AC, take shifts watching the apartment, forge texts and emails on the deceased's behalf. But as the days pass, they are confronted with surprise visitors, hidden motives, deep-seated resentments and the devices of nature herself. How far will this foursome go to help their friend die a winner?
Packed into a drama-filled week, bristling with insight and dark humor, Stockholm offers a refreshingly honest consideration of the age when we begin to measure the sum of our lives.
"A seriously funny take on death and dying." -Kirkus Reviews, starred review
An ingeniously plotted dark comedy by Noa Yedlin, "a master at tone" (Kirkus Reviews, starred review) about aging and friendship following a tight-knit circle of seniors as they attempt to hide the death of one of their best friends so he can win the Nobel Prize for Economics.
Avishay is up for the Nobel Prize for Economics. There's just one problem-he's dead. His four closest friends agree that the well-earned prize must stay within his grasp, and so conspire to conceal Avishay's corpse until the committee's announcement. The potential of a glorious legacy for their late friend - and by extension, for them all - is only a mere eight days away. What could go wrong?
Each member of the quartet has their own motive for the scheme. Zohara, Avishay's longtime secret lover, needs her widowhood acknowledged through an inheritance. Amos, a less successful academic than his late friend, is proving he can overcome his jealousy. Insecure magnate Yehuda needs the association to promote his own upcoming book. And Nili, a divorcee chafing against her grandmotherly expectations, thrills at the adventure.
Their plan starts out simple: turn up the AC, take shifts watching the apartment, forge texts and emails on the deceased's behalf. But as the days pass, they are confronted with surprise visitors, hidden motives, deep-seated resentments and the devices of nature herself. How far will this foursome go to help their friend die a winner?
Packed into a drama-filled week, bristling with insight and dark humor, Stockholm offers a refreshingly honest consideration of the age when we begin to measure the sum of our lives.
Reviews / Votes
"Yedlin, a master at tone, grounds the antic comedy in reflections on aging, friendship, parenthood, life as 'one big effort to compensate for feelings of inferiority,' and 'sadness, more sadness, respectable sadness, unsatisfying sadness, mature sadness'...A seriously funny take on death and dying." - Kirkus Reviews (starred review)"A deviously clever black comedy ... Yedlin puts her characters through the wringer with the nonstop confrontations, which are distressing to them and hilarious to the reader. At the same time, she uses the slapstick situation to ask probing questions about the nature of friendship and mortality. Readers will be amused by this literary variation on Weekend at Bernie's" - Publishers Weekly
"Hilarious, refreshing, tightly plotted and vividly written. An irresistible read." - Jonas Jonasson, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared
"The portraits of these four friends are so vivid that as I read, I felt that Avishay's friends also became mine. Stockholm is unputdownable, full of intrigue, a bit of sadness, and a lot of humor." - Helene Tursten, internationally bestselling author of An Elderly Lady Is Up To No Good
"Set against a backdrop of comedic errors, Stockholm is also a brilliant meditation on the intricacies of friendship, aging, ego, wounds and healing. Yedlin expertly peels back her complex characters' layers to reveal insights, dark and humorous alike, about what it is to be alive and mortal." - Parini Shroff, author of The Bandit Queens
"A riotous novel... on friendship, character and aging" - The New York Times Book Review
"Stockholm is a madcap adventure filled with laughs and tears and the kind of under-your-skin frustration that only your closest friends can give you." - Bookpage (starred review)
"A hilar-i-ous and pro-found explo-ration of mor-tal-i-ty" - Jewish Book Council
"Diabolically entertaining" - Shelf Awareness
"Too funny, too sad, too real, and too preposterous, just like life. Noa Yedlin's Stockholm is the most entertaining book I've read in a long time." - Etgar Keret, author of The Seven Good Years
"Translated from the Hebrew, Yedlin's charmingly self-aware novel pays tribute to Waking Ned Devine and The Big Chill without lessening the genuine emotions shared amongst this unique group. Ruminating on the power of lifelong friendship-and a little luck-this warm and witty novel is sure to appeal to fans of Zoe Fishman's Inheriting Edith (2016) and Daniel H. Turtel's The Family Morfawitz (2023)" - Booklist
"A delightful dark comedy" - The Spectator
"Bright, witty, irreverent and compassionate, Noa Yedlin's best-selling novel Stockholm is an astute and hilarious study of the very building-blocks of the human condition: love, ambition, aging, friendship, envy and loyalty." - Ruby Namdar, Author of The Ruined House and laureate of the Sapir Prize
"Noa Yedlin has a brilliant sense of Irony. In STOCKHOLM you will find your friends' covert feelings and your closest family members' most secret thoughts - and it's going to be surprising, frightening, funny and liberating". - Dorit Rabinyan, author of All the Rivers
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
United States
Publishing group
HarperCollins Publishers Inc
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
Thickness: 28 mm
Weight
490 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-06-331081-0 (9780063310810)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Noa Yedlin is a bestselling Israeli author, the recipient of the Sapir Prize and the Prime Minister's Prize for Hebrew Literary Works. Yedlin is also the creator of an award-winning television series based on the original edition of Stockholm, which was published in Israel in 2016.
Jessica Cohen is a renowned literary translator of Israeli works. Her translation of David Grossman's novel A Horse Walks into a Bar received the 2017 Man Booker International Prize, a National Jewish Book Award, and was shortlisted for the PEN Translation Prize.
Jessica Cohen is a renowned literary translator of Israeli works. Her translation of David Grossman's novel A Horse Walks into a Bar received the 2017 Man Booker International Prize, a National Jewish Book Award, and was shortlisted for the PEN Translation Prize.