The Invoice: A Novel [Hardcover]

A heartfelt exploration of the cost of life and love—and the importance of the little things—from the author of the international bestseller,The Room

Hilarious, profound, and achingly true-to-life,The Invoiceexplores the true nature of happiness through the eyes of hero you won’t soon forget. A passionate film buff, our hero’s life revolves around his part-time job at a video store, the company of a few precious friends, and a daily routine that more often than not concludes with pizza and movie in his treasured small space in Stockholm. When he receives an astronomical invoice from a random national bureaucratic agency, everything will tumble into madness as he calls the hotline night and day to find out why he is the recipient of the largest bill in the entire country.

What is the price of a cherished memory? How much would you pay for a beautiful summer day? How will our carefree idealist, who is content with so little and has no chance of paying it back, find a way out of this mess? All these questions pull you throughThe Invoiceand prove once again that Jonas Karlsson is simply a master of entertaining, intelligent, and life-affirming work.International Praise for The Invoice:

“A fanciful escape from everyday life.”
–New York Post

“The unassuming hero of Jonas Karlsson's clever, Kafkaesque parable is the opposite of a malcontent…The Invoiceexplores how we define a happy life through the trials of another plain-spoken everyman teetering between banality and absurdity. Both of [his] novels, as tightly constructed as theatrical plays, are laced with incisive criticism of our soul-sapping world of coldblooded bureaucracy. Karlsson expertly wrings humor from the contrast between the bizarre, increasingly alarming circumstances in which his narrators find themselves and their low-key, matter-of-fact responses.&rdquolĂb