Vådan av att vara Skrake

1952 is a big year for Finland: Helsinki hosts the Olympics, Coca-Cola arrives and a Finnish beauty queen is crowned Miss Universe. Werner Skrake, just back from a year at an American school, is picked to drive one of the soft-drink lorries when the brand is launched, and lands in a ditch with his whole cargo smashed, a disgrace both Helsinki dailies print with photographs. His son Wiktor, a journalist named after Yuri Gagarin, is still teased about it decades later. After Werner's death Wiktor moves back to the family house at Råberga and goes over the life of his luckless father, a hammer thrower and keen angler, and the family's past, from his hard, rich grandfather Bruno and great-uncle Leo back to civil-war Ostrobothnia, while the big trout of the archipelago keep escaping them.

AI-generated summary

About the book

Form

Novel

Length

373 pages in the original

Genres

Family, Historical (assigned by AI)

Set in

Finland

First published

2000 by Söderström & Co

Author's age

39 when first published

ISBN

9789515218537 (original)