Even If Everything Ends

(Paperback)

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Description

Life goes on in the face of a climate crisis in this astonishing and unforgettable debut novel that follows four characters as they struggle to survive in a burning world.

Even when the climate crisis escalates beyond our worst nightmares and people become refugees, the world keeps turning and life carries on as usual: teenaged love stories, marital collapses, identity crises and revolts against hopeless parents continue to play out.

Didrik is a forty-year-old media consultant whose misguided efforts to become the family hero render him a pathetic vision of masculine incompetence. Melissa is an influencer with a suitcase full of lost dreams after denying climate change for years. Andre is the nineteen-year-old loser son of an international sports star who uses the erupting violence around him to orchestrate his own personal vengeance on his negligent father. And Vilja is Didrik's teenaged daughter who steps into a leadership role in the face of adult ineptitude.

Through these four inter-connected perspectives, Jens Liljestrand chronicles how the struggles of ordinary people go on even as the world as we know it is coming to an end.

Reviews

Jens Liljestrand's new book appears at the intersection of filmmaker Ruben stlund and Norwegian writer Maja Lunde. It is about the climate, but also masculinity gone wrong. The well-off father of three who tries to suck the most pleasure out of the yellowing lawns at the vacation home in Dalarna is a close relative of stlund's whimpy middle class husband from the film Force Majeure * Sveriges Radio Kulturnytt i P1 (Sweden) *
Even if Everything Ends is written with devastating skill: simultaneously nerve-wracking, astute and consumedly entertaining * Sydsvenskan (Sweden) *
Even if Everything Ends is not a classic dystopia, more like a typical realistic novel that happens to take place in a dystopian time: our own. It doesn't seem very far-fetched to assume that Liljestrand, in a Jonathan Franzen-manner, wanted to write the big Swedish novel about climate collapse * Svenska Dagbladet (Sweden) *
Liljestrand skillfully describes a form of pathetic and grandiose masculinity, all sprained pride and self pity (reminiscent of the male depiction in Ruben stlunds' Force Majeure)... Liljestrand writes with an admirable prose which flows, and in its best moments it's both poetic and psychologically sharp. The book's true merit, however, lies in how it evokes the experience of crisis, the normalcy that has been disturbed' * Dagens Nyheter (Sweden) *
A page turner. You're hunted through scorching heat, through soot flakes, through the pathetic remains of the castle in the sky that was once the society in which we lived. Take out, lattes, motor boats, stupidity... Jens Liljestrand strikes where it hurts the most, in the middle of the repressed fear that everything will soon be over * ETC (Sweden) *
Intriguing, well-written and thought provoking * Jyllands Posten (Denmark) *
A page turner. . . The story surprises the reader with a multitude of twists and turns, but it is so well constructed that it captivates until the very last page * Information (Denmark) *
Outstanding * Weekendavisen (Denmark) *
Unsettling * Tzum (The Netherlands) *
As thrilling as Jens Liljestrand's account of the impending catastrophe is, his masterstroke lies, above all, in the choice of his antiheroes. Their selfish revelations function as a magnifying glass for the issues we will face in a very near future... They are a reminder of the empathy that is so urgently needed to face climate change together * Kultunews (Germany) *
The book's fast-paced plot creeps under your skin... This book drew me in and didn't let go until the very last page * GRAFF (Germany) *
Stephen King with a shot of Scandinavian realism * Basler Zeitung (Germany) *
Feverish. . . By the end of the novel everyone - including the reader - will have travelled through the great gap dividing our theoretical knowledge of a subject from our ability to feel it in the flesh * Le Monde (France) *
In his own way, romantic and irreconcilable, the Swedish writer appeals to our common sense as much as to our lost innocence, to save what can still be saved * La Vie (France) *
Jens Liljestrand's admirable skill of narration lasts until the very last phrase * La Croix (France) *
What an achievement! Breathtaking * Le Pelerin (France) *

Author Bio

JENS LILJESTRAND (1974) is a critically acclaimed journalist and writer. He has been a critic for the newspapers Sydsvenskan and Dagens Nyheter and was a long-serving editor of the culture section of Expressen.