In this "briskly entertaining" ( New York Times Book Review ), "transporting and wholly original" ( People Magazine ) novel, one man banishes himself to a solitary life in the Arctic Circle, and is saved by good friends, a loyal dog, and a surprise visit that changes everything. In 1916, Sven Ormson leaves a restless life in Stockholm to seek adventure in Svalbard, an Arctic archipelago where darkness reigns four months of the year and he might witness the splendor of the Northern Lights one night and be attacked by a polar bear the next. But his time as a miner ends when an avalanche nearly kills him, leaving him disfigured, and Sven flees even further, to an uninhabited fjord. There, with the company of a loyal dog, he builds a hut and lives alone, testing himself against the elements. The teachings of a Finnish fur trapper, along with encouraging letters from his family and a Scottish geologist who befriended him in the mining camp, get him through his first winter. Years into his routine isolation, the arrival of an unlikely visitor salves his loneliness, sparking a chain of surprising events that will bring Sven into a family of fellow castoffs and determine the course of the rest of his life. Written with wry humor and in prose as breathtaking as the stark landscape it evokes, The Memoirs of Stockholm Sven is a testament to the strength of our human bonds, reminding us that even in the most inhospitable conditions on the planet, we are not beyond the reach of love. #1 Indie Next Pick Finalist for the Vermont Book Award Longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize “Briskly entertaining . . . I was reminded more than once of Annie Proulx’s The Shipping News . . . combines a distinctive northerly setting with a cast of likable eccentrics . . . Rather than any creed or belief system, it is Sven’s various friendships, intense but understated, that sustain him and give his life an order and purpose.”― Ian McGuire, New York Times Book Review “Transporting and wholly original . . . this modern-day Call of the Wild is funny, moving, and ceaselessly compelling.”― People (Book of the Week) “Ceaselessly brilliant as an arctic sun, The Memoirs of Stockholm Sven illuminates the very nature of human yearning and perseverance. In attempting to inhabit the uninhabitable, one man shows us that no place is inhospitable to the human heart, and in delivering this searing portrait, Nathaniel Ian Miller ascends to the firmament of today’s most exciting young novelists.”― Adam Johnson, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Orphan Master’s Son “An eloquent, finely chiseled novel.”― O, The Oprah Magazine “Surprisingly humorous, this heartwarming story reminds us that love can reach the iciest depths of our hearts, even in the most inhospitable locations.”― Kirby Beaton, Buzzfeed “A book one savors for its prose, its characters, and its insights… The Memoirs of Stockholm Sven e xplores many varieties of aloneness—and togetherness—with enormous insight, empathy, and humor… [Miller is] a skilled writer.”― Margot Harrison, Seven Days Vermont “A striking first novel by the American writer Nathaniel Ian Miller… an unusual, surprisingly witty tale, with a memorable central character.”― The Times (UK) “Captivating . . . Miller offers a marvelously detailed look at a way of life and a profession practiced in an extreme environment, and though purportedly based on a historical figure, the character’s colorfully rendered experiences are the stuff of powerful dramatic fiction.”― Publishers Weekly (starred review) “Readers will love the beauty and depth of his story . . . A Swedish trapper relates his unique life with insights about friendship, hardship, and solitude.”― Kirkus (starred review) “Miller’s prose is lit by sparks of Sven’s somber humor and descriptive elegance . . . Miller's characterization is exceptional and thoroughly engaging, as are the vividly portrayed island denizens . . . Miller has given [Sven] an imagined life told in his own words in this engrossing fictional memoir.”  ― Bethany Latham, Booklist (starred review) “A stellar first novel . . .  So authentic in both detail and narrative voice that it’s easy to forget it’s not an actual memoir . . . A truly walloping tale of solitude and survival told in visceral detail, a combination of Miller’s wild imagination and his beautifully precise prose . . . Sven is an insightful yet comically ironic narrator, and there is often great excitement in his story, including ‘ice bear’ attacks, near starvation, Northern Lights, and the haunting sounds of calving glaciers . . . Miller imbues his novel with an unforgettable narrator who asks essential questions of human connection, a remarkable achievement for a novel ostensibly about solitude . . . Like the Arctic landscape itself, The Memoirs of Stockholm Sven is beautifully stark and unimaginably rich, a book that will long be remembered by its lucky readers.”― Alice Cary, BookPage (