The Burning

Life goes on in the face of a climate crisis in this unforgettable, “relevant, and entertaining” (Fredrik Backman, New York Times bestselling author) debut novel that follows four characters as they struggle to survive in a burning world.

Even when the climate crisis escalates beyond our worst nightmares and people become refugees, the world keeps turning and life carries on as usual: teenage love stories, marital collapses, identity crises, and rebellions against hopeless parents continue to play out.

Didrik is a forty-year-old media consultant whose misguided efforts to become the family hero render him a pathetic vision of incompetence. Melissa is an influencer with a suitcase full of lost dreams after denying climate change for years. André is the nineteen-year-old loser son of an international sports star who uses the erupting violence around him to orchestrate his own personal vengeance on his negligent father. And Vilja is Didrik’s teenage daughter who steps into a leadership role in the face of adult ineptitude.

“A devilish twist on climate fiction” (Publishers Weekly), The Burning eloquently illustrates a picture of a very near future that is at once extraordinary and entirely realistic.

The Burning was previously published as Even If Everything Ends.

Jens Liljestrand is a critically acclaimed journalist and writer in his native Sweden. He has been a critic for the newspapers Sydsvenskan and Dagens Nyheter and was a long-serving editor of the culture section of Expressen. His bestselling biography about Vilhelm Moberg, The Man in the Woods, was nominated for the prestigious August Prize. The Burning (previously published as Even If Everything Ends) is his first novel.