Everything I Don't Remember

Starred review from May 23, 2016
Khemiri (Montecore) won Sweden’s most prestigious literary honor, the August Prize, for this compelling novel about Samuel, who was born in Sweden but is of North African descent, and whose last day alive is reconstructed by an unnamed narrator who wants to write about the young man for his own introspective purposes. Was Samuel’s death in a car crash an accident, suicide, or murder? Through tantalizing fragments, the reader learns of the dead man’s various relationships: with Laide, the woman he was dating, who wanted to provide a safe house for abused Muslim women; with Vandad, Samuel’s roommate, with whom he had a falling out; and with Samuel’s grandmother, who allowed Laide’s abused women to live in her house, until somebody burned it down. In this painful novel about youthful optimism gone hopelessly wrong, Khemiri dramatizes such immigration-related issues as failures in elder care, unemployment and dead-end jobs, drug abuse, and racial prejudice. Agent: Astri von Arbin Ahlander, Ahlander Agency (Sweden).

May 1, 2016
In Stockholm, a young man's death forces his friends to consider their culpability. At the outset of Swedish novelist and playwright Khemiri's novel, the protagonist is already dead. The mission of the novel is to piece together the how and why. Samuel, the main character, is killed in a single-car collision with a tree, whether due to bad brakes or suicidal intent is unclear. Flashbacks and flash-forwards follow, narrated in short segments by, among others, Samuel; his friend and housemate, Vandad; and his ex-lover Laide. Samuel and Laide met through their work; he is a functionary with the Migration Board, dealing with residency permits, and she is an interpreter of Arabic and other languages. Laide is also an activist who participates in demonstrations against anti-immigration policies and who establishes, in a house vacated by Samuel's grandmother, a shelter for women, many of them abused, who have fled the Middle East. Vandad, who, it appears, may be gay and attracted to Samuel, is a large man who works as an enforcer for a loan shark until his conscience gets the better of him. He tries more legitimate employment as a mover without much success. Samuel's grandmother, who suffers from dementia, has moved into a nursing home. At first Laide and Samuel's affair blossoms, but it sours in less than a year. When Laide breaks it off, Vandad, out of misguided loyalty to Samuel, reverts to thuggish form in trying to persuade her to reconsider. The grandmother's house is soon overrun with refugees, a fire starts, and Samuel's despair mounts as his family questions why he allowed this to happen, and he himself wonders why he trusted Laide. The piecemeal structure, an agglomeration of vignettes, makes it hard to identify who is narrating. Although the postmodern presentation is initially off-putting, the characters, once we discern who's talking, are deftly drawn. Their voices, resonating with internal conflict and arch humor, are ably rendered in Willson-Broyles' translation. Initially confusing but ultimately moving and grimly funny.

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February 15, 2016
This is not your standard thriller. It won the August Prize, Sweden's top-drawer literary honor, and its author took home an Obie Award in 2011 for his Off-Broadway play, "Invasion!" A young man named Samuel dies in a car crash, and an unnamed writer decides to interview Samuel's friends, relatives, and neighbors to reconstruct his last day and determine whether the death was an accident or suicide.

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