Marbella Club by Mons Kallentoft
TRAFFICKING, CORPORATE GREED, LOVE...
Marbella Club is a gripping novel about present day Europe. Two young Russian lovers, Vladi and Kati, are wanted by the Russian mafia and flee St. Petersburg. They end up in Madrid, but the metropolis proves to be an austere home for refugees and forces Kati into prostitution.
In Marbella, she is picked up by a young Swedish businessman. The next morning, she is gone. Vladi becomes desperate to find Kati, or at least answers. What has happened to her? Is she still alive? As Vladi embarks on a desperate journey across Europe, his Russian past comes back to haunt him.
Marbella Club is a chilling chronicle of contemporary Europe, where greed reigns supreme behind closed borders and compassion always comes at a cost. It is a truly European novel about life on the continent in an era of major changes, but also a love story of rootlessness, ruthlessness and survival at the dawn of a new century.
Reviews
"Mons Kallentoft has written a novel that it is easy to like. Thematically it touches upon many important, urgent issues: the relationship between the rich and the poor, globalization, a loss of values and the ethical swampland that threatens to be the consequence of an existence where only the pursuit of profit is allowed to rule./…/The story is also written in a way that immediately captures the reader." Svenska Dagbladet
"Mons Kallentoft writes with sharpness and an edge to it, the language is beautiful (…). The beginning of Marbella Club seizes you by the throat, and so does the ending." Upsala Nya Tidning
"Kallentoft has succeeded in writing a contemporary novel that it so contemporary it burns." Borås Tidning
" …the dark-as-night description of people being exploited and exposed hits the reader like a fist, powerful and merciless." Helsingborgs Dagblad
"Just as in his novel Pesetas, which won the prize for best literary debut, Kallentoft uses the language as a shaky, hand-held camera with an x-ray function." Expressen
"The language is sharp, some would call it hardboiled, but I find it poetic. Details and exteriors are sharp as a knife, without unnecessary and tiresome vivid descriptions.
There are many emotions that surface when I read Marbella Club." Hallands Nyheter
"With Marbella Club, Mons Kallentoft lives up to the expectations that were placed on him with Katapultpriset, the prize for the best Swedish literary debut." Göteborgs-Posten
"His descriptive and attentive words elevate the book to a very personal plateau that makes it impossible to put down. Time and again I am surprised how a book, so callous and true, can be so beautiful at the same time. Mons must be some kind of an artist." Tove Nordqvist, Gefle Dagblad
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