Fredrik Backman is a Swedish novelist, columnist and blogger, born on 2 June 1981. He made his debut in 2012 with “A Man Called Ove” and has since written the Beartown trilogy, “Anxious People” and “My Friends”.
Backman grew up in Helsingborg and wrote for the newspaper Helsingborgs Dagblad and for the men’s magazine Moore. “A Man Called Ove” was published in Swedish by Forum in 2012 and in English the following year, and it went on to become a New York Times bestseller. A book of essays on fatherhood, “Things My Son Needs to Know About the World”, appeared in the same year: Backman made its publication a condition of his deal for the novel. After the success of his debut, Atria (Simon & Schuster) bought the rights to his other novels and had them translated into English.
“A Man Called Ove” has been filmed twice. The Swedish version, with Rolf Lassgard in the lead, opened on 25 December 2015. The American remake, “A Man Called Otto”, starred Tom Hanks and was released at the end of 2022.
His next two novels are linked: Britt-Marie, a character in “My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry” (2013), takes the lead in “Britt-Marie Was Here” (2014), which was filmed with Pernilla August in the title role. “Beartown” (2016), published in the United Kingdom as “The Scandal”, is set in a declining hockey town and follows the consequences of a violent incident involving two teenagers. The story continues in “Us Against You” and “The Winners”, and HBO Europe made a five-episode series of the first book in 2020.
“Anxious People” (2019) became a Netflix series in 2021, and an American film version directed by Marc Forster has been announced. Backman has also published the novellas “And Every Morning the Way Home Gets Longer and Longer” and “The Deal of a Lifetime”, and the short story “The Answer Is No”. His most recent novel, “My Friends”, was written in Swedish but came out first in English, from Atria in May 2025, with the Swedish edition following that August. He married Neda Shafti Backman in 2009 and they have two children.
Publication Order of Beartown Books
| Beartown / The Scandal | 2016 |
| Us Against You | 2017 |
| The Winners | 2021 |
Publication Order of Standalone Novels
| A Man Called Ove | 2012 |
| My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry / My Grandmother Sends Her Regards and Apologises | 2013 |
| Britt-Marie Was Here | 2014 |
| Anxious People | 2019 |
| My Friends | 2025 |
Publication Order of Short Stories/Novellas
| And Every Morning the Way Home Gets Longer and Longer | 2015 |
| The Deal of a Lifetime | 2016 |
| The Answer Is No | 2024 |
Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books
| Things My Son Needs to Know About the World | 2012 |
Photo: Albin Olsson, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons (cropped).