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The Girl Who Saved the King of Sweden
Cover of The Girl Who Saved the King of Sweden
The Girl Who Saved the King of Sweden
A Novel
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A picaresque tale of how one person's actions can have far-reaching—even global—consequences, from the author of the bestselling novel The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared

In a tiny shack in the largest township in South Africa, Nombeko Mayeki is born. Poor and orphaned, she quickly learns that the world expects her to die young. But Nombeko has grander plans. Little does this cunning and fearless girl know that soon she will steal a fortune in diamonds, outwit a mad scientist kidnapper, travel across the world, fall in with a pair of diabolical assassins, and ultimately save a king—and possibly the world.
Jonas Jonasson tackles issues ranging from the pervasiveness of racism to the dangers of absolute power in a charming and hilarious story. In the inimitable voice that has earned him legions of fans the world over, he gives us another rollicking tale of how even the smallest of decisions can ripple out into the world.

A picaresque tale of how one person's actions can have far-reaching—even global—consequences, from the author of the bestselling novel The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared

In a tiny shack in the largest township in South Africa, Nombeko Mayeki is born. Poor and orphaned, she quickly learns that the world expects her to die young. But Nombeko has grander plans. Little does this cunning and fearless girl know that soon she will steal a fortune in diamonds, outwit a mad scientist kidnapper, travel across the world, fall in with a pair of diabolical assassins, and ultimately save a king—and possibly the world.
Jonas Jonasson tackles issues ranging from the pervasiveness of racism to the dangers of absolute power in a charming and hilarious story. In the inimitable voice that has earned him legions of fans the world over, he gives us another rollicking tale of how even the smallest of decisions can ripple out into the world.

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About the Author-
  • JONAS JONASSON worked as a journalist for the Expressen newspaper for many years. He became a media consultant and later set up a company producing sports and events for Swedish television. He then sold the company and moved abroad to work on his first novel. Today Jonasson is a global phenomenon. His five novels—The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared, The Girl Who Saved the King of Sweden, Hitman Anders and the Meaning of It All, The Accidental Further Adventures of the Hundred-Year-Old Man and The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Skipped Out on the Bill and Disappeared—have sold sixteen million copies in forty-six countries. Jonas Jonasson lives on the Swedish island of Gotland in the Baltic Sea.

Reviews-
  • Library Journal

    December 1, 2013

    Jonasson gave us a crusty centenarian in his internationally best-selling debut, The 100-Year-Old-Man Who Climbed Out the Window. Now he gives us Nombeko Mayeki, born desperately poor in Soweto, who works her way up to chief adviser on a hush-hush project. Though South Africa voluntarily dismantled its six nuclear missiles in 1994, Nombeko knows about a seventh missile. Now she's running from South Africa's secret service--and ends up in Sweden. With a 100,000-copy first printing.

    Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

  • Kirkus

    Starred review from May 1, 2014
    A funny and completely implausible farce about a woman, a bomb and a man's frustrated ambition to overthrow the king of Sweden.Nombeko Mayeki is a 14-year-old latrine cleaner in apartheid-era Soweto who is exceptionally good at her job. Because of her race, she is incorrectly presumed to be illiterate. She gets another job as the housemaid of the nuclear engineer in charge of South Africa's secret program to build six atomic bombs, and in her spare time, she masters Wu Chinese at the library in Pretoria. The engineer is an incompetent fool who accidentally builds a seventh bomb that remains a secret even to his bosses. Soon, Nombeko ships two crates: dried antelope meat to feed herself as she escapes to Sweden and the 1,700-pound atomic bomb the engineer wants sent to the Mossad in Israel. But the packages get switched, and for years Nombeko carts a 3-megaton bomb around Sweden while the Mossad doesn't know what to do with the antelope meat. Meanwhile, Ingmar Qvist's lifelong dream is to abolish the Swedish monarchy. He indoctrinates his identical-twin sons, both named Holger, to carry on after his death. But Holger One is an idiot, and Holger Two, whose birth was not registered and who thus technically doesn't exist, is intelligent. Because Nombeko is an illegal immigrant, she doesn't exist either. And of course the bomb doesn't exist. Can Nombeko and Holger Two prevent the idiot anarchist Holger One and his idiot girlfriend, Celestine, from blowing up the king, themselves and a sizable chunk of Sweden? Author Jonasson is wickedly inventive with a constant flow of absurdities, for which his narrator blames the Almighty: "If God does exist, He must have a good sense of humor." This book follows Jonasson's equally crazy The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared (2012).Definitely not a book for sourpusses. The rest of the world will chuckle all the way through it.

    COPYRIGHT(2014) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

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The Girl Who Saved the King of Sweden
A Novel
Jonas Jonasson
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