The Illiterate Who Saved the King and the Kingdom Too

One more surprisingly funny book with a surprisingly long title, by the wittiest writer in Sweden. Nombeko Miekki didn’t have the luck to be born in the early sixties in South Africa, at the height of apartheid, where her closest circle—black sanitation workers from Soweto—spent most of their time on just two things: “slowly killing themselves and going to say goodbye to those who had already managed it.” But Nombeko is no ordinary girl: her ability to absorb new information is rivaled only by her drive for knowledge. After learning to read and write, she first becomes the supervisor of sanitation in Soweto’s “B” sector, and then—following her dream—to get into Pretoria’s National Library—she leaves the slums. Instead, she ends up a prisoner at the super-secret military base of Pelinda, from which, however, she also manages to escape—though not somewhere, but all the way to Sweden itself… “The illiterate who saved the king and the kingdom besides” is the second novel by Jonas Jonasson, author of the acclaimed bestseller “100 Years and a Suitcase Full of Money.” Fans of the Swedish writer’s talent will find all the familiar hallmarks in his new novel: extraordinarily vivid, memorable characters, wild plot twists, and of course a cocktail unlike anything else—irony, satire, and absurdist humor. The novel has been translated into 28 languages and more than 3 million copies have already been sold worldwide.