Peter Stjernström - The Best Book in the World

Mix the ingredients into a pizza dough. Grease a roasting pan with olive oil. Cover the bottom of the pan with the dough pushing it out to the edges with your fingers. Cover the pan with a tea towel and leave it to rise for about 20 minutes while you prepare the sauce and the various toppings. Turn the oven to 250oc.

Pizza sauce

I tin of chopped tomatoes

2 tablespoons of tomato purée

2 teaspoons of white pepper and black pepper

A few drops of Tabasco

1 teaspoon of oregano

1 teaspoon of salt

1 crushed garlic clove

Mix all the ingredients for the pizza sauce, and taste. By all means sprinkle a little vinegar, sugar and pepper onto the mixture. Experiment a little! Let the sauce simmer a long time.

Pizza toppings

Prepare the toppings while the dough is rising.

Fresh, newly peeled prawns

Fresh, finely sliced mushrooms

Air-dried Italian ham

Mussels pickled in water

Pickled artichoke

Cut and grate the cheese: equal amounts of mozzarella, emmental and parmesan

When the dough base has risen for 20 minutes, spread the sauce over it and start with a layer of cheese.

Divide the pizza into quarters and add the topping in the following order: from ‘12 o’clock’ on the pizza and clockwise: ham is winter, mussels are spring, prawns are summer and mushrooms are autumn. If you believe in God, stick an artichoke in the middle. Push the topping gently into the sauce with you hand.

Bake in the oven for 15–20 minutes at 250°.

If you have used an artichoke, say a prayer.

Take a break from the ABC Method, and enjoy the best pizza in the world!

Titus is sitting on the exercise bicycle at the gym. The sweat is running down the inside of his old bleached T-shirt with the Einstürzende Neubauten print that he bought in Berlin in 1983.

He has started to appreciate these two-hour breaks all the more. When Astra had turned up with a gym membership card, he had just snorted at her. But she evidently knew what she was doing. Titus has a feeling that she always knows what she is doing. An alpha woman. Young, attractive, clever, independent and with just the right amount of pushiness. He couldn’t have a better editor. He has been lucky in that respect.

Titus likes his new life. It’s been going on a few weeks now. Not since his teens has he had such a long period without any alcohol at all. Sure, he pulls out his reward image now and then, but it’s more to keep it alive than because he really needs it. Like an amusing joke, a pleasant memory. For the time being, another form of energy keeps him away from spirits and cigarettes.

The book.

Writing gives him energy. He’s rattling along and he knows it’s going to be good. The book is easily accessible in its style, but heavy as lead in its themes. He throws in so many references that critics will be kept busy for decades trying to analyse his intentions. The characters around Håkan Rink are built up in such a deliberately slow and refined manner that the reader should feel obliged to read on. The breakthrough and unexpected turning points are planned down to the tiniest detail. At the same time, Titus is careful not to reveal too much to readers. That would be an insult to their intelligence. Too many details are for nerds and bores. My readers are here making history with me, Titus thinks. It is my readers who will fill the characters with flesh and blood. It is my readers who will create the details in the room. It is they who will get involved, who will let themselves be amused and worried. My readers are the cleverest and the best, he says to himself, and pedals away for all he is worth on the exercise bike.

Titus doesn’t like the suburbs. He has lived all his life in the centre of the city and likes crowds and asphalt. The few times he has been on holiday abroad, it has only been to other big cities. There, he never runs the risk of suddenly finding himself without a bar within easy reach.

Of course, he has been in the countryside – but only in the safe context of a boozy midsummer party or similar event. Titus has always felt that nature shows off a bit, that as soon as he comes along it spruces itself up to an incredible degree and tries to seduce him with its birdsong and its smells, although what it really wants to do is entice him into the mud in a dirty forest pond. And suddenly he has been conned. He sinks slowly under the surface while the pixies scornfully laugh at him with the blue midsummer night sky in the background. No, the countryside is hell. Out there, you must be on your guard. Or very drunk.

The suburbs are not the slightest improvement on the countryside. People in the suburbs are farmers. Instead of tractors, they drive around in enormous estate cars. All they talk about is the weather, sports news and lotteries. The only difference from real farmers is that the suburban people have cheap blue suits instead of cheap blue overalls.

Now, Titus is forced to visit the suburbs. Well, forced is perhaps not strictly accurate. He has been given a chance to learn about therapy for free. It would be an abuse of his professional responsibility not to profit from the chances that pass his way.

FF, as Håkan Rink would have labelled it. Follow the Flow.

When Titus gets off the bus he is on the very edge of Stockholm. Beyond the roundabouts and viaducts he can just make out the thousands of detached houses, terraced houses, the blocks of flats, the playing fields with artificial grass, and the shopping centres. He shudders and thanks his lucky stars that he only had to go as far as no-man’s land and not the whole way, deep into suburban hell. Valhallavägen 1 and the roundabout at Roslagstull are without doubt Stockholm’s precipice – another couple of metres and he would have risked falling over the edge and that would be the end of it.

Instead he presses the bell down by the entrance. It just says Dr Rolf. Strange that there isn’t any surname. What sort of doctor only has a first name? Has he come to a children’s hospital?

‘Yes, hello!’ a voice shouts over the intercom, loud enough to drown the roar from the roundabout which catapults the big silver-coloured suburban cars northwards.

‘Yes, hello!’ Titus shouts back into the microphone. ‘I have a free appointment for multi-therapy at 10 o’clock!’

‘Come inside, I’ve nothing to hide! Fifth floor. There’s a lift on the left!’

A short buzz signals that the door can be pushed open. Titus enters and approaches the lift. When the door shuts behind him, he finds himself in total silence. The feeling of being in the suburbs soon fades. This is going to be exciting, he thinks, and overcomes his aversion to lifts.

When he reaches the fifth floor, the door to one of the flats is already open. He sees a hall that could well belong to a therapy clinic.

‘Next!’

A large and jovial man in a white coat suddenly appears from nowhere. He stretches his hand out towards Titus.

‘Hahaha! Titus Jensen, I presume.’

‘Quite right.’

‘I am Doctor Rolf. Ralf Rolf.’

‘Ralf Rolf?’ wonders Titus, who thinks that Ralf Rolf sounds more like a dog barking than a name.

‘Exactly! Ralf Rolf. But you can call me Ralf. Doctor Ralf Rolf or just Ralf, that’s me. Welcome!’

Titus looks around in the waiting room. Along one wall there are open empty chests full of theatre clothes and strange props all jumbled up together. Police uniforms, loose noses, wigs, dresses, coats of mail, theatre masks, fake boobs, and enormous Tyrolean short trousers. In the corner next to the chests is a room divider with an arrow and sign that says: Get changed here.

On the walls, Titus sees enormous framed poster-like images with black one-liners against a white background: