This nordic prize-winning novel, a truly gripping epic, relates the lives of four generations of a unique and strange family with touching intimacy and surreal comedy. Traces four generations of a family marked by the un...This nordic prize-winning novel, a truly gripping epic, relates the lives of four generations of a unique and strange family with touching intimacy and surreal comedy. Traces four generations of a family marked by the untimely birth of fred, a misfit and boxer conceived during a devastating rape who forges an unusual friendship with his younger half-brother, barnum.