Jonasson was faced with a huge challenge when writing this book. His previous book ‘The hundred-year-old man who climbed out of the window and disappeared’  sold three million copies.

The novel was a comic novel written in Swedish. Jonasson had every headwind possible. Getting novels published is very hard, getting it translated is exceptionally hard, and then getting sales momentum is Mount Everest.  And he did it. But it piled pressure on to him. “Do it again!”

 And he has. As with P G Wodehouse the joy is in the surreal juxtaposition of ideas and their ‘internal’ coherence. The Prophet is a woman who believes that the world is about to end – all proved mathematically . The Idiot is the younger brother of an incredibly exploitative older brother who destroys his self-esteem. The third character is an elderly (75 years old) reclusive woman who is running a lucrative *teenage* Instagram scam.

What follows are their adventures. And they are compelling.