Nordic Book Club: Things That Fall From the Sky

Read and discuss Nordic literature in translation as part of our Nordic Book Club. Each month we select a novel from some of the best Nordic literary voices. Discussions typically take place the last Tuesday of the month in the Halldór Laxness Library at Scandinavia House and online in our Goodreads group during the last week of the month.

This week we’re reading Things That Fall From the Sky by Selja Ahava, winner of the EU Prize for Literature.
“Sometimes something happens — just that once — but for the rest of your life you have to wonder why. Sometimes nothing happens, and for the rest of your life you wonder why it didn't.”
In this narrative, Selja Ahava weaves together three lives that are changed by a series of random events: a young girl who loses her mother when a block of ice falls from the sky; a woman who wins the jackpot twice; and a man who is struck by lightning four times.