Books Like A Man Called Ove

Fredrik Backman’s A Man Called Ove is one of the most beloved novels of the century: the story of a grumpy old man who has decided that the world has gone soft, and who is prepared to be angry about it until the day he dies - which he keeps trying to arrange. Ove is a man of rules and routines, a man who has spent his life doing things properly, a man who has lost the one person who made it all worth it. And then a new family moves in next door - a pregnant woman, a clumsy husband, two daughters, and a cat - and Ove’s orderly, angry life begins to fall apart, in the best possible way.

The book is funny, warm, and devastating in equal measure - a comedy about grief, a novel about kindness, a story about the life you almost didn’t live. If you have finished it and want more, here is where to go next.

If You Loved the Grumpy Protagonist: The Closed Heart That Opens#

The engine of the book is Ove himself: a man whose walls are his whole personality, worn down by kindness until the person underneath appears. These books are about protagonists of the same kind.

A Man Called Ove, and the Man Behind the Walls#

The book’s great achievement is its protagonist: Ove is impossible to love at first - rigid, angry, dismissive - and the book’s structure is designed to make you understand him: the present-day chapters, where the new neighbors keep interrupting his suicide attempts, interleaved with the past, where we learn about Sonja, the wife who saw the man underneath and loved him. The book is an argument about judgment: the people who seem impossible are often the ones carrying the most pain, and the ones who need kindness the most. By the end, Ove is beloved - and the book has earned it.

The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared (Jonas Jonasson)#

Allan Karlsson is a hundred-year-old man who climbs out the window of his retirement home on his birthday and walks away - and the book is about his picaresque adventures, and the century of history he has accidentally shaped. It shares A Man Called Ove’s elderly protagonist and its warmth, in a much sillier register.

The Curious Charms of Arthur Pepper (Phaedra Patrick)#

Arthur Pepper, a widower, discovers a charm bracelet among his late wife’s things - a bracelet he has never seen - and the book is about his journey to learn the story of each charm, and of the wife he thought he knew. It shares A Man Called Ove’s structure: a grieving older person, a discovery, a journey into the past, a life re-entered.

If You Loved the Neighborhood: Communities That Take Care of Each Other#

The heart of the book is the neighborhood: the people who keep interrupting Ove, who need his help, who refuse to let him be alone. These books are about communities of the same kind.

A Man Called Ove, and the Family Next Door#

The book’s engine is the arrival of the new neighbors - Parvaneh, the pregnant woman who will not be intimidated, her husband Patrick, their daughters, and the cat that Ove did not want and cannot give up. The neighborhood is the book’s argument: that we are not meant to be alone, that the people who need us are the people who save us, and that community - messy, intrusive, insistent - is the antidote to despair. The book is a love letter to the people who will not let you be alone.

The House in the Cerulean Sea (T. J. Klune)#

An orphanage full of extraordinary children, and the caseworker who finds a family there: Klune’s book shares A Man Called Ove’s structure - a closed heart, a found family, a life transformed - in a cozier register.

The Thursday Murder Club (Richard Osman)#

Four retirees in an English retirement village solve cold cases for fun, and then a real murder arrives. It shares A Man Called Ove’s warmth, its community of older people, and its conviction that the people who have lived are not done.

If You Loved the Grief: Books About Loss and the Way Through It#

Beneath the comedy, A Man Called Ove is a book about grief: Ove’s wife is dead, and the book is about a man who has decided that life without her is not worth living. These books are about grief of the same kind.

A Man Called Ove, and the Life After Loss#

The book’s deepest subject is grief: Ove’s suicide attempts, his refusal to go on, his conviction that the world is worse without Sonja. The book is an argument about grief: that it is not a weakness but a kind of love that has nowhere to go, and that the way through it is not forgetting but connection - the people who need you, the cat that needs feeding, the neighbor who needs a hand. The book never trivializes Ove’s grief; it walks with him through it, and it finds him, on the other side, a man with a reason to live.

The Light Between Oceans (M. L. Stedman)#

A lighthouse keeper and his wife, a boat that washes ashore, a choice with terrible consequences: the book is about grief and guilt and the long way back. It shares A Man Called Ove’s seriousness about loss, in a very different register.

A Grief Observed (C. S. Lewis)#

The essential nonfiction companion: Lewis’s journal of grief after the death of his wife, in which he works through the anger, the doubt, and the slow return of faith. It shares A Man Called Ove’s honesty about grief, told true.

If You Loved the Cat: Animals Who Save Us#

The cat is one of the book’s great characters: the mangy stray that Ove did not want, that he feeds, that he cannot give up, that becomes the reason he keeps going. These books are about animals of the same kind.

A Man Called Ove, and the Cat Who Stayed#

The cat is the book’s symbol: the creature that needs Ove, that refuses to leave, that forces him out of his routines and into relationship. The book is an argument about animals: that they love us without judgment, that they need us, and that caring for a creature - even a mangy stray - is a reason to live. The cat is the first thing Ove lets in, and it is the beginning of everything.

The Travelling Cat Chronicles (Hiro Arikawa)#

A man and his cat, traveling across Japan to find the cat a new home: the book is about the bond between them, and about what we owe the creatures we love. It shares A Man Called Ove’s love of cats and its understanding that animals save us.

Dewey (Vicki Myron)#

The true story of a library cat who transformed a small town: it shares A Man Called Ove’s conviction that a cat can be the thing that holds a life together, in a nonfiction register.

If You Loved the Comedy: Books That Make You Laugh and Cry#

The book’s genius is its tone: funny on every page, devastating underneath, and the two are inseparable. These books share that balance.

A Man Called Ove, and the Comedy of Grief#

The book’s comedy is not decoration - it is the way the book carries its grief. Ove’s rants about the new neighbors, his battles with the cat, his war with the bureaucracy - they are funny, and they are also the book’s argument: that life is absurd and painful and ridiculous, and that laughter is how we survive it. The book trusts its readers to laugh and cry in the same chapter, and it is that trust that makes it work.

The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared (Jonas Jonasson)#

Allan Karlsson’s adventures are pure comedy - a century of history, accidentally shaped - and the book shares A Man Called Ove’s warmth and its elderly protagonist, with less grief and more silliness.

Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine (Gail Honeyman)#

Eleanor Oliphant is a woman with a rigid routine and a wall around her heart, and the book is about the slow, funny, devastating process of her coming alive. It shares A Man Called Ove’s structure - a closed heart, a found family, a life transformed - with a female protagonist and a different register.

If You Loved the Transformation: The Life You Almost Didn’t Live#

The deepest structure of the book is transformation: Ove, at the beginning, is a man who has decided to die; Ove, at the end, is a man with a life. These books are about transformations of the same kind.

A Man Called Ove, and the Second Life#

The book is an argument about second chances: that it is never too late to be pulled back into life, that the people who need you are the people who save you, and that the life you almost didn’t live is the one worth living. Ove’s transformation is not a conversion - he is still grumpy, still rigid, still Ove - but he is Ove with a life: with people who need him, a cat that loves him, a neighborhood that belongs to him. The book’s ending is one of the most moving in modern fiction, and it is earned by everything that came before.

The Midnight Library (Matt Haig)#

Nora Seed finds herself in a library between life and death, where every book is a life she could have lived. It shares A Man Called Ove’s question - what is the life worth living? - and its discovery that the life you have is the one worth living.

A Christmas Carol (Charles Dickens)#

The essential ancestor: Scrooge, the original grumpy old man, transformed by a night of visitations into a man with a life. It shares A Man Called Ove’s structure - the closed heart, the transformation, the second life - and its conviction that it is never too late.

Building Your Own Neighborhood: A Reading Order#

Here is a suggested path that moves from the closest match outward:

• Start with Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine for the closed heart in a different key.
• Move to The House in the Cerulean Sea for the found family.
• Try The Travelling Cat Chronicles for the cat story.
• Pick up The Midnight Library for the book about the lives we could have lived.
• End with A Christmas Carol for the ancestor of the transformation.

For more books with this kind of warmth, our clean mystery themes and values guide explains what makes these stories work, and our family-friendly clean books for adults list gathers wholesome, substantial reads. The stories section of our site is full of guides like this one, so there is always another neighbor to meet.

The Man Who Was Saved by Kindness#

A Man Called Ove endures because it is a book about the most important discovery there is: that it is never too late to be pulled back into life. Ove is a man who has decided to die, and the book is about everything that stops him - the pregnant woman who will not be intimidated, the cat that will not leave, the neighborhood that will not let him be alone. The book is funny and devastating in equal measure, and its argument is simple and profound: that kindness is the strongest thing there is, and that the people who need you are the people who save you. The books on this list are Oves of a kind - grumpy old men and closed hearts, cats and neighbors, lives almost not lived. The cat is waiting. The neighbors are moving in. And it is never too late - that is the book’s whole argument, delivered with a comedian’s timing and a mourner’s honesty. Ove is saved by the ordinary: a pregnant woman who will not be intimidated, a cat that will not leave, a neighborhood that keeps needing him. The book trusts its readers to laugh and cry in the same chapter, and it is that trust that has made it beloved around the world.