Even If Everything Ends

Jens Liljestrand

‘We are on the brink of something humanity has never experienced before.’

‘Right. So why does everything feel so familiar?’

A fire is raging. Half of Sweden is in flames, towns and villages are being evacuated.

It’s the summer when the climate catastrophe suddenly escalates beyond our worst nightmares. Yet life must go on as usual: teenage romances, marital breakdowns, identity crises and parental rebellion continue to unfold, even as reality crumbles. In four interlinked stories, Jens Liljestrand portrays the lives of four people who must continue living and find their way when doom has become everyday life.

We follow Didrik, a modern man with a well-paying media consultant job, as he flees from his summer home with his wife and three children. It is a struggle, the kids are screaming and he cannot get the electrical car to work – the battery can’t be charged. Didrik’s feeble attempts at heroism are misguided and only seem to make things worse. On top of it all, he wants to leave his wife for a woman that is 20 years younger.

We also get the perspective of his lover, influencer Melissa, who happens to be a climate change denier. She is determined to stay positive and live in the present, in spite of everything going on.

Our third protagonist is André, the son of a famous tennis player, who is growing up in his father’s shadow. Embittered, he sees the violence of the crisis as an opportunity to set his revenge in motion.

Finally, Didrik’s fourteen-year-old daughter Vilja shares her story. Once self-obsessed, the ongoing catastrophe becomes a turning point for the teenager. When the adults showcase a startling incompetence, she takes on the responsibility to organise a resistance.

Even If Everything Ends, that has sold to over 20 countries, is an entertaining and relentless exploration into what happens to the city-dwelling middle class when the climate crisis is at their doorstep, but they are forced to carry on anyways.

“Clever and engaging.” – Fredrik Backman

“Captivates until the very last page.” – Information

“Stephen King with a shot of Scandinavian realism.” – Basler Zeitung

”Liljestrand deftly portrays the slightly pathetic grandiosity of masculinity, the bruised pride and self-pity… Liljestrand writes with an admirably flowing prose, which at its best is both poetic and psychologically perceptive … The book’s merit, however, lies in its evocation of the experience of crisis, of normality being disrupted, of suddenly finding oneself in the midst of it: the smoke burning in your throat, the soot flakes swirling around, the sky the colour of old urine. What kind of repression must one actually muster to exist in such a world, how is everyday life ever possible again?” – Dagens Nyheter