Join us for a fantastic evening with the critically-acclaimed Swedish author and journalist, Andrev Walden to discuss his debut novel, Bloody Awful in Different Ways: a story of a boy's attempt to come to terms with a life where fathers are constantly replaced, becoming a humorous examination of a different kind of childhood.

Date:
Thursday 9th of October

Venue:
Max Minerva's, 47 Henleaze Road, BS9 4JU

Time:
Doors at 18:30. Discussion at 19:00. Finish approx 20:00.

Tickets:
£5.50 ticket only
£16.99 ticket with Bloody Awful in Different Ways (hardback)
£1 Pay What You Can
(Please only choose the PWYC tickets if you need to, they are limited and intended for those who really need them.)

50p from each ticket goes to Caring In Bristol

You don't need to bring your ticket with you, we will have a list of names on the door. Books will be available to buy on the night. 

ABOUT THE BOOK ~

Bloody Awful in Different Ways

Once I had seven fathers in seven years. This is the story of those years.

I’m fizzing. It seems as if... I love not being his son. Yes. I can feel it in my whole body. A great thrill – as if an adventure has begun. As if I’m the boy in a book about a boy who finds out his dad is the king of a magical and distant land.

Christmas, 1983. In the aftermath of yet another furious argument, seven-year-old Andrev’s mother lets him in on a secret: his father is, in fact, not his father. And so begins a new kind of childhood, in which fathers come and go, arriving in red Volvos and sweeping his mother off her feet.

Fathers can be magicians or murderers, artists or canoe enthusiasts, and, like growing pains, or the weather, they appear uninvited and leave without warning. Fathers are drawn to his mother like moths to a flame – but even she can’t control how they behave.

Vivid and joyful, raw and tender, Bloody Awful in Different Ways is a novel about growing up in the chaos of social change; about how love begins and ends; and above all, about men. Because after all, you learn an awful lot about this strange species when you have seven fathers in seven years.

~

THE RUNAWAY SWEDISH BESTSELLER: Bloody Awful in Different Ways was the bestselling book in Sweden in 2023, across all genres, selling over 170,000 copies in Sweden in its first year. It won the 2023 August Prize, Sweden's most prestigious literary award, and is being translated into ten different languages. The novel is being adapted for screen, with filming commencing in 2025.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR 

Andrev Walden is an acclaimed Swedish journalist and columnist who has worked for Dagens Nyheter and Aftonbladet. In 2017, he became the first columnist to be nominated for the Swedish Grand Prize for journalism, praised for his ability to ‘find the everyday drama in the big questions’, and to make us ‘laugh and see the world, the family and ourselves in a new and slightly wiser light’. He lives in Stockholm. Bloody Awful in Different Ways is his first novel.