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Book Summary and Reviews of When the Cranes Fly South by Lisa Ridzén

When the Cranes Fly South by Lisa Ridzén

When the Cranes Fly South

A Novel

by Lisa Ridzén

  • Publishes:
  • Aug 5, 2025, 320 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

A profoundly moving debut novel that follows an elderly man's struggle to maintain autonomy over his own life: an emotional story of love, friendship, fatherhood, and atonement that is already an international sensation.

Bo is running out of time. Yet time is one of the few things he's got left. These days, his quiet existence is broken up only by daily visits from his home care team. Fortunately, he still has his beloved elkhound Sixten to keep him company … though now his son, with whom Bo has had a rocky relationship, insists upon taking the dog away, claiming that Bo has grown too old to properly care for him. The threat of losing Sixten stirs up a whirlwind of emotion, leading Bo to take stock of his life, his relationships, and the imperfect way he's expressed his love over the years.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"A powerful, sneakily emotional meditation on life and death, and the foundational relationships in our lives. This is a book that will echo in your soul." —Garth Stein, New York Times bestselling author of The Art of Racing in the Rain

"A tender tale about ageing, our own and others, and the quiet brutality of love. About what being a man is, and what being a human is, about fathers and sons and fathers and dogs. It's really a book for anyone who's had to say goodbye. The kind of book you give to someone when you're really trying to say "I've been thinking about you" but don't know how."  —Fredrik Backman, #1 New York Times bestselling author of A Man Called Ove

This information about When the Cranes Fly South was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

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More Information

Lisa Ridzén is a doctoral student in sociology, researching masculinity norms in the rural communities of the Swedish far north, where she herself was raised and now lives in a small village outside of Östersund. The idea for her debut novel came from the discovery of notes her grandfather's care team had left the family as he neared the end of his life.

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