Hakan Nesser: “A message came from Munich”

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Christie parody

The plot itself feels like a parody of an Agatha Christie mystery, which is probably what was intended. The film follows a body in a gallery in a snow-covered house far out in the wilderness, where two police officers are trapped along with six suspected family members. The snow-covered house is inhabited by sixty-year-old Ludwig Rott and his beautiful young companion, Catherine. Ludwig, a wealthy, world-famous Swedish painter with a home in France, has now decided to celebrate Christmas at a mansion in Selingbo, a small, fictional village not far from the Norwegian border.

He invites his three brothers to celebrate. It's Leif, a philosophy lecturer, and former restaurant owner Lars who has a wife. Finally, there is Louise, now an unemployed actress. She brought her daughter, who studies psychology.

tragic

“A Letter Came from Munich” is actually a tragic family drama, with Neisser giving voice to each act by act. A particularly inharmonious group of siblings, who haven't seen each other in twenty-five years. Firstly – and my favorite character – he is called the man without qualities. He is the utterly tragic Lars Root, who has been overlooked his entire life.

And also on the deathbed of the domineering father when he was bragging about his children until he came to Lars and asked who on earth… he our.

“It was about human dignity. He had believed that since he was old enough to understand some hidden mechanism. How much right one has to take a large or small place in the world, for example. What is given to one. “By measure, as they say.” , Lars thinks of one of the beautiful passages in this book. Other than that, there's not much beauty in Lars.

A beautiful white woman was killed

Book added for Christmas Corona 2020 – Lars is angry that Corona restrictions mean that he has had to sell his two restaurants (or his wife's), and that his daughter has no chance of coming home for Christmas. He's angry with his wife, and he's angry with his brothers. Especially Ludwig the snot who made him drive to this deserted place.

In addition, the house has become a ghostly old school, where children can be heard crying at night.

Surrealism

“If I were a light bulb, I would peak at 25 watts,” Lars says of himself, with one of the countless witty and surreal images in the book. As when you're served a meal that's a bit sad, but full of cheese, Barbarotti thinks: “Better a cheerful grilled sausage than a depressed lobster.” Or when Barbarotti is surprised by Catherine's beauty: “As if the visual impression itself lays a veil over the mind.”

The greatest pleasure in reading Naseer is that it seems as if he himself is having fun when he writes – something that affects us readers.

Especially regarding Barbarotti, for example when he lets the detective dream that he is killing Trump with a golf ball. The curious Barbarotti, who in the previous books has long conversations with our Lord.

Beautiful short stories

In this book, Ludwig is the one who has those conversations. He was religiously challenged, which is why he called his brothers to a meeting on Christmas Eve. They seemed to be shaken when they came out. The next morning, a body was found in the gallery.

The plot is definitely exciting and entertaining. But the strength of the book lies in the many people we meet. She makes each chapter a beautiful little novel – with human destinies perhaps at the forefront, but nonetheless recognizable in all their tragic fragility.

From within the invasion