The Girl Who Saved the King of Sweden


The Girl Who Saved the King of Sweden is a Swedish novel written by Jonas Jonasson. The book was first published in 2013 as the second novel of the author, after the best-selling The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared, and translated into English by Rachel Willson-Broyles

Plot

In 1961, Nombeko Mayeki is born a poor black girl in Soweto. She leaves the slums and a twist of fate – she is run over but survives – puts her into the employ of the engineer who ran her over, as a cleaner in South Africa's secret nuclear weapons facility. Here, her good head for mathematics leads her to cover for her drunken and incompetent employer. Two Mossad agents eventually murder her employer, and she outwits them and escapes to Sweden, but due to a mixup, ends up in possession of a missing South African atom bomb. In Sweden, she settles in a bizarre commune including two unstable republicans determined to end the Swedish monarchy. Nombeko and her Swedish boyfriend are determined to hand the bomb over to the Swedish Prime Minister, but no-one will believe them. Years later, after several attempts to hand over the bomb have failed in absurd circumstances, the two republicans kidnap the King and the Prime Minister of Sweden from a gala banquet with Chinese President Hu Jintao at the Royal Palace in Stockholm, and prepare to blow up the bomb in order to end the monarchy. Nombeko calms the situation down, saving the King's life, and her own.