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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.
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Popular Music from Vittula, Mikael Niemi
- Language
- Released
- 2004
- product-detail.submit-box.info.binding
- (Paperback)
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- Language
- English
- Authors
- Mikael Niemi
- Publisher
- Seven Stories Press
- Released
- 2004
- Format
- Paperback
- Pages
- 237
- ISBN10
- 1583226591
- ISBN13
- 9781583226599
- Series
- Tags
- Fiction, Humor, Music Theme, Contemporary Fiction, Friendship, Gifts for grandpa, Sexuality & Intimacy, Coming Of Age, Teens, Scandinavian Literature, Childhood, Sweden, Swedish literature, Autobiographical Novels, Scandinavia, Puberty, Finland, 1960s, 1970s
- First published
- 2000
- Original title
- Populärmusik fran vittula
- Rating
- 3.7 out of 5
- 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.






