The Deal of a Lifetime

Fredrik Backman — the author of A Man Called Ove — has built his career on the discovery that the most ordinary human moments are the most extraordinary. The Deal of a Lifetime is a novella: a very short book, barely a hundred pages, in which a dying CEO tells his estranged son a story about a boy in a hospital, a business deal, and the thing he traded away without quite knowing he was doing it.

The story Backman tells is deceptively simple, and its emotional ambush is all the more effective for being so well concealed. This is a book about what we sacrifice to succeed, about the deals we make with ourselves about what matters, and about the moment — which may come only once — when we have the chance to understand what our choices have actually cost us.

Brief enough to read in a single sitting. Deep enough to stay with you for a long time afterward. The ideal introduction to Backman’s work — and a perfect gift for anyone navigating the gap between ambition and meaning. Published by Penguin.