Die Analphabetin, die rechnen konnte
Die Analphabetin, die rechnen konnte (The Girl Who Saved the King of Sweden) is Jonas Jonasson's follow-up to his bestselling debut, told in the same absurdist, deadpan comic style.
Nombeko Mayeki grows up illiterate in a Soweto shanty township, cleaning latrines to survive, until she teaches herself to read and reveals a genius for mathematics. A workplace accident lands her at a secret South African nuclear weapons facility, where she becomes entangled in the fate of a smuggled, unaccounted-for atomic bomb. Her escape route takes her to Sweden, where she crosses paths with feuding twin brothers both improbably named Holger, a Swedish king with more warmth than sense, and a cast of diplomats, spies, and potato farmers, all while trying to quietly get rid of a bomb nobody is supposed to know exists.
As with Jonasson's other novels, the tone is broadly comic and satirical even as it touches on apartheid-era South Africa, nuclear proliferation, and Swedish politics, using absurd farce to poke at the folly of the powerful.
A self-taught mathematical genius who escapes poverty in South Africa and becomes entangled with a smuggled nuclear bomb.
Swedish twin brothers, one raised to fulfil their late father's obsession with the monarchy.