num_pages: 237
description: Popular Music from Vittula tells the fantastical story of a young boy's unordinary existence, peopled by a visiting African priest, a witch in the heart of the forest, cousins from Missouri, an old Nazi, a beautiful girl with a black Volvo, silent men and tough women, a champion-bicyclist music teacher with a thumb in the middle of his hand—and, not least, on a shiny vinyl disk, the Beatles.The story unfolds in sweltering wood saunas, amidst chain thrashings and gang warfare, learning to play the guitar in the garage, over a traditional wedding meal, on the way to China, during drinking competitions, while learning secret languages, playing ice hockey surrounded by snow drifts, outsmarting mice, discovering girls, staging a first rock concert, peeing in the snow, skiing under a sparkling midnight sky. In the manner of David Mitchell’s Black Swan Green, Mikael Niemi tells a story of a rural Sweden at once foreign and familiar, as a magical childhood slowly fades with the seasons into adult reality.
language: English
title: Popular Music from Vittula
titlecomplete: Popular Music from Vittula
genres: Coming Of Age, Swedish Literature, Scandinavian Literature, Novels, Finnish Literature, Music, Sweden, Fiction, Contemporary, Humor
ratings_count: 9442
places: Pajala, Sweden
awards: awardedAt: 946713600000
name: Augustpriset
category: Fiction, awardedAt: 946713600000
name: Tidningen Vi:s litteraturpris
publisher: Seven Stories Press