MY FRIENDS

BACKMAN Fredrik, SMITH Neil [Translator]

ISBN 10: 1398516392 / ISBN 13: 9781398516397

Published by Simon & Schuster UK, 2025. 9781398516397, 2025

About this Item

1st edn 1st printing. 8vo. Original white lettered blue cloth (Fine), dustwrapper (Fine, not price clipped). Pp. 434 (no inscriptions).

Seller Inventory # 193338

Bibliographic Details

• Title: MY FRIENDS
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK, 2025. 9781398516397
• Publication Date: 2025
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1398516392
• ISBN 13: 9781398516397
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Dust Jacket Condition: Dust Jacket Included
• Seller catalogs:
  • Literature

About this title

Synopsis

The beautiful new novel that will make you laugh and cry, from the global bestselling author of Anxious People and A Man Called Ove. Fredrik Backman returns with an unforgettably funny, deeply moving tale of four teenagers whose friendship creates a bond so powerful that it changes a complete stranger’s life twenty-five years later…

You have to take life for granted, the artist thinks, the whole thing: sunrises and slow Sunday mornings and water balloons and another person’s breath against your neck. That’s the only courageous thing a person can do.

In the corner of one of the most famous paintings in the world three tiny figures sit at the end of a pier. Most people don’t even notice them. Most people think it’s just a depiction of the sea. But Louisa, an aspiring artist herself, knows otherwise.

Twenty-five years earlier, in a distant seaside town, a group of teenagers seek refuge from their bruising home lives by spending long summer days together. They tell jokes, they share secrets, and they commit small acts of rebellion. These lost souls find in each other a reason to get up each morning, a reason to dream, a reason to love.

Out of that summer emerges a transcendent work of art, a painting that will unexpectedly be placed into 18-year-old Louisa’s care. Determined to learn how it came to be and to decide what to do with it, Louisa embarks on a cross-country journey. But the closer she gets to the painting’s birthplace, the more nervous she becomes.

In this stunning testament to the transformative, timeless power of friendship and art, Louisa is proof that happy endings don’t always take the form we expect.