Such Good Work - by Johannes Lichtman (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

From Johannes Lichtman comes a wisely comic debut novel about a teacher whose efforts to stay sober land him in Sweden, but the refugee crisis forces a very different kind of reckoning.You don't have to be perfect to do good... Jonas Anderson wants a fresh start. He's made plenty of bad decisions in his life, and at age twenty-eight he's been fired from yet another teaching position after assigning homework like, Attend a stranger's funeral and write about it. But, he's sure a move to Sweden, the country of his mother's birth, will be just the thing to kick-start a new and improved--and newly sober--Jonas. When he arrives in Malmo in 2015, the city is struggling with the influx of tens of thousands of Middle Eastern refugees. Driven by an existential need to "do good," Jonas begins volunteering with an organization that teaches Swedish to young migrants. The connections he makes there, and one student in particular, might send him down the right path toward fulfillment--if he could just get out of his own way. "Such Good Work is, indeed, a bit Jonas-like: it's wary of affectation or grandstanding; it works small, as if from a sense of modesty, a reluctance to presume; it cuts sincerity with the driest of humor" (The New Yorker). In his debut, Lichtman, "a remarkable thinker and social satirist" (The New York Times Book Review), spins a darkly comic story, brought to life with wry observations and searing questions about our modern world, and told with equal measures of grace and wit.

Review Quotes

PRAISE FOR SUCH GOOD WORK by JOHANNES LICHTMAN "Lichtman [is] a remarkable thinker and social satirist...Such Good Work introduces a writer who is willing to openly contradict himself, to stand corrected, to honor both men and women, to ask sincere questions and let them ring unanswered...Jonas finds a companion in his neighbor Anja, one of the more autonomous, intelligent and unpredictable female characters to grace a male novelist's debut. Lichtman has a terrific ear for the tiny linguistic cues that reveal completely correct English to be nonetheless foreign, and Anja's dialogue is delivered in sometimes heartbreakingly poignant German-English...The reader feels the potency of a kind of communication between lovers that is non-national, non-hierarchical and pronounced in peace...The novel outgrows its own boundaries, becoming stranger and more robust." -NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW "Such Good Work is, indeed, a bit Jonas-like: it's wary of affectation or grandstanding; it works small, as if from a sense of modesty, a reluctance to presume; it cuts sincerity with the direst of humor. Such Good Work [is] alive to the contradictions between morality and comfort that exist everywhere under global structures of capitalism and politics. Moving to Sweden is a way for Jonas to reconcile his privilege with his ideals-perhaps it is easier, in the land of subsidized housing and schooling and health care, to live well, to care about injustice, and to not be a hypocrite. The book contain[s] both sadness and expectation-leav[ing] the reader grazed by tempered hopes."-THE NEW YORKER "The international refugee crisis and the struggle to stay sober preoccupy roughly equal portions of this thoughtful first novel, which follows an American graduate student to Sweden in the fraught years 2014-15...[It] casts a sharp eye over the Swedish social and political landscape...Lichtman's low-key treatment of two highly charged subjects is refreshing."-KIRKUS REVIEWS "[An] excellent and timely debut ... Throughout, Lichtman expertly infuses his multicontinental narrative with humor and humanity, suggesting the dangers of intolerance while also poking fun at the white savior trope. Jonas may be helping others to make himself feel whole, yet his heartfelt actions stick with the reader in this winning novel."-PUBLISHERS WEEKLY "The novel answers its primary question, Is doing good even possible?, with significant emotional honesty, and Lichtman's clear and accessible writing allows readers to explore its complex topics at many levels. Jonas is a bundle of shifting emotions, needs, and coping mechanisms, and rather than doing good, easing the discomfort of being human is at times all he can manage."-BOOKLIST "[Lichtman] has written a likeable, funny and thoughtful book with an endearingly frustrating central character. Without appearing to try too hard, Such Good Work gets to the heart of what it means to have a conscience and attempts-however futile that attempt may be-to use it for the greater good. It is gratifying that Mr Lichtman does not endeavour to offer a satisfying answer to these questions of migration, belonging, alienation and addiction. Rather like the solitary characters in Go, Went, Gone, Jenny Erpenbeck's novel about Germany's refugee crisis, and Leaving the Atocha Station, Ben Lerner's tale of a disaffected young American living in Madrid around the time of the terrorist attack in 2004, Jonas reflects, regrets and moves on."-THE ECONOMIST "[A] wise and funny debut novel...Lichtman handles this transition with dexterity and humor as he explores what it means to do the good work of being human."-NEW YORK JOURNAL OF BOOKS "With intelligent probing, sinuous prose, and considerable charm, this Bildungsroman charts his journey, an interior trip to the core of being a compassionate human in the twenty-first century. Scenes read like meticulous journal entries as Jonas both records his urge to help and questions his own motives and

About the Author

Johannes Lichtman's debut novel, ?Such Good Work, was chosen as a?5 Under 35 honoree by the National Book Foundation.?His work has appeared in?Tin House, ?The Sun, ?Travel + Leisure, ?Los Angeles Review of Books, ?Oxford American, and elsewhere.?He lives in Washington, DC.