Bloody Awful in Different Ways

This is a new book. Condition: Brand New.

The phenomenal internationally bestselling novel about a boy who has seven fathers in seven years- 'a little treasure of a book' - Fredrik Backman

Once I had seven fathers in seven years. This is the story of those years.

I'm fizzing. I love not being his son.
Yes. I can feel it in my whole body. A great thrill - as if an adventure has begun. As if I'm the boy in a book about a boy who finds out his dad is the king of a magical and distant land.

Christmas, 1983. In the aftermath of yet another furious argument, seven-year-old Andrev's mother lets him in on a secret- his father is, in fact, not his father. And so begins a new kind of childhood, in which fathers come and go, arriving in red Volvos and sweeping his mother off her feet. Fathers can be magicians or murderers, artists or thieves, and, like growing pains, or the weather, they appear uninvited and leave without warning. Fathers are drawn to his mother like moths to a flame - but even she can't control how they behave.

Vivid and joyful, raw and tender, Bloody Awful in Different Ways is a novel about growing up in the chaos of social change; about how love begins and ends; and above all, about men. Because after all, you learn an awful lot about this strange species when you have seven fathers in seven years.

Book details and technical specifications

Format: Paperback / softback
ISBN13: 9781405971270
Published: February 2026

Number of pages: 352
Width: 128 mm
Height: 214 mm
Depth: 24 mm

Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd