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 thieves, 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.
Translator bio
Ian Giles is an Edinburgh-based translator working from Swedish, Norwegian, and Danish into English. He has more than 35 published translations to his name, ranging from bestselling fiction to complex academic and cultural texts. Recent publications include high-profile translations of authors such as Camilla Läckberg and David Lagercrantz, as well as the international bestseller Bloody Awful in Different Ways by Andrev Walden. Ian is the current Chair of the Translators Association and a former Chair of the Swedish-English Literary Translators’ Association.
Notes on translating the work: https://gilestranslation.com/category/baidw/
Author bio
Andrev Walden is an acclaimed Swedish journalist and columnist. In 2017, he was nominated for the Swedish Grand Prize for Journalism, praised for his ability to ‘find the every-day 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.
Video greeting from the author: https://youtu.be/E_UzIDJhcCg?si=NlHmqMozT3J2-BAd
Press quotes:
But the coup of the book is its take on coming of age… It tells you things about growing up that you didn’t realise were true, not until Walden put them into words. […] Bloody awful? Bloody brilliant, more like.
George Cochrane, Daily Telegraph, 26/07/25 (archived version here: https://archive.md/x4Vt4)
The writing remains so sharp, so beguiling, so acutely observed that by this point I was willing to follow Andrev/Andrev pretty much anywhere.
Rebecca Wait, The Guardian, 04/08/25 (online here: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/aug/04/bloody-awful-in-different-ways-by-andrev-walden-review-darkly-funny-swedish-autofiction)
Links to buy:
Print: https://uk.bookshop.org/a/2434/9780241720288 or order from any bookshop with ISBN 9780241720288
Audio: https://linkto.xigxag.co.uk/links/5V22