An international bestseller, sold in twenty countries the wittily bleak, startlingly original, elegantly crafted tale of an unlikely quest for the ultimate hash.

The main ingredient in the recipes for Swedish hash, a dish known among the peasants of remote northern villages for its delectability and restorative powers, differ widely. The meats, offal, and grain that go into its preparation an elaborate process of boiling, pickling, steaming, and stewing can range from the heinous to the dangerous, and the results can be alternately emetic and sublime. The search for the most delicious dish of hash the ultimate hash forms the backbone of the blackly comic, marvelously innovative new novel from one of Sweden s most esteemed and bestselling authors.

In a small town where an epidemic of tuberculosis rages, two very different men arrive to a scene of suffering accepted by the inhabitants not with stoicism or as a test of fate, but almost with glee. Robert Maser is a traveling garment salesman whose accent and demeanor betray the fact that he is actually the fugitive Martin Borman, the Nazi leader rumored to have slipped past Red Army lines during the fall of Berlin. He engages the local schoolteacher, Lars, on the bizarre quest to find world s best hash, and together they wander the Swedish countryside, inviting themselves into peasant homes to sample the variety of humble family recipes. As their search becomes more impassioned, it becomes clear that their goal is much more than a culinary marvel, and that what they ve really been seeking is the force of life that must present itself even in dark times.

Their adventures are narrated in a faux-naive style by a 107-year-old newspaper reporter, who was witness to the events as they occurred in 1947, and has waited until now to confront his own relationship to life and death, happiness and suffering, and the power of art to express life s ambiguities.

Torgny Lindgren is the most prominent ironist in Swedish literature. Express

Rarely have I read a novel with such a powerful opening as this one. And the remarkable thing is that the novel never loses momentum after this, but gets better and better, more and more tight in its composition, more and more vivid in its portrayal of characters. Svenska Dagbladet

Torgny Lindgren is widely hailed as one of the most prominent literary figures on the world scene today. He has been awarded the August Prize, the Swedish National Book Award, and the Nordic Prize, and his novels have been published in more than twenty-five languages. In 1991, Lindgren was elected to the Swedish Academy, the eighteen member committee that selects the honorees for the Nobel Prize for Literature.