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Title: Everything I Don't Remember
Author: Jonas Hassen Khemiri, Rachel Willson-Broyles - translator
Narrator: Jack Hawkins
Format: Unabridged
Length: 7 hrs and 14 mins
Language: English
Release date: 07-13-17
Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK
Genres: Fiction, Contemporary
Publisher's Summary:
The top 10 international best seller.
Winner of the August Prize for Fiction.
Dazzlingly inventive, witty and mysterious: a writer pieces together the story of a young man's death in an exhilarating narrative puzzle reminiscent of the hit podcast Serial.
A young man dies in a car crash - accident or suicide? An unnamed writer with an agenda of his own sets out to piece together Samuel's story. From friends, relatives and neighbours, a portrait emerges of a loving son, reluctant bureaucrat, contrived poser, loyal friend. But who was Samuel really, and what happened to him? In filling out the contours of his existence, the writer grasps at a fundamental question: how do we account for the substance of a life?
Critic Reviews:
"Khemiri's audacious and richly drawn novel pushes the boundaries of literary fiction.... Beneath the structural pyrotechnics lies a broader story of imposition, appropriation and lack of individual agency: that of the immigrant experience." (Lucy Scholes, The National)
"Heartbreakingly sad and laugh-out-loud funny.... Its chorus of drifters, romantics and cynics stick in the memory, each competing to tell their own truth." (Hari Kunzru)
"Unforgettable. In this non-putdownable puzzle of a story, Khemiri manages to both thrill and break your heart." (Gary Shteyngart)
Members Reviews:
Topical, poignant and very innovative, a really interesting book
Everything I Don't Remember won the August prize for best Swedish fiction book of the year in 2015. Generally, the fact that it was awarded a prize would be a clear indicator that it won't be a book for me. Not so in this instance. I can actually for once understand why this book won an award.
Everything I don't remember is about Samuel who died in a horrific car crash. Was it an accident? Was it suicide? An unnamed writer sets out to reconstruct Samuel's last day and learns a lot about the young man through conversations with his imposing friend and roommate, Vandad, his ex-girlfriend, Laide, his arty childhood friend, Panther, as well as Samuel's mother and grandmother who has dementia.
If you prefer a traditional linear narrative and have all questions answered at the end, this may be difficult and ultimately unsatisfactory reading. It is ambiguous and in the end, some things are left to your own interpretation. It needs concentration as it feels like putting together a puzzle. It's very innovatively structured with small bits of dialogue without any introduction of the speaker, the perspectives change back and forth, and the timeline switches. Sounds very confusing, but I found it really easy to follow once I got past the first couple of pages. The characters are portrayed really convincingly and the atmosphere is captured extremely well. Laide is a Swedish - Arabic interpreter who is passionate about helping women and supporting asylum seekers. Samuel whose father is North African works for the migration board. Current and authentic, part of the book conveys the experience of immigrants in Sweden (though it could equally be set elsewhere). But the main focus is on how memories relate to reality. The memories of Samuel's friends show clearly that there is no objective truth and that all narrators are unreliable.
