Around the time of Jacob's bar mitzvah, his mother leaves his father for another man, and he is not even Jewish. It's 1987, the First Intifada is about to break out, and the Jewish community in Gothenburg, many of them descendants of Holocaust survivors, is under a certain amount of strain. Jacob relates his family's break-up in the context of a fragmented diaspora community orientated towards Israel and America with humour and affection. Mendel-Enk's debut novel is a portrait of a Swedish Jewish community, filled with comedy, tragedy and zest for life.

Translated by: Michael Lundin