You can listen to the Book Summary Below
The narrative of The Sisters by Jonas Hassen Khemiri is a sprawling, multi-generational epic that follows the lives of the three Mikkola sisters Ina, Evelyn, and Anastasia and their intersection with the life of the narrator, Jonas, a writer who shares their Swedish-Tunisian heritage. Spanning from the late twentieth century into a speculative future, the novel is structured as a countdown across several “Books” that cover progressively shorter periods of time: from one year down to a single minute. At its core, the story explores themes of displacement, identity, creative obsession, and the pervasive power of a family “curse” that haunts the sisters throughout their lives.
Book 1: 2000 – The Millennium and the Origins of a Bond
The story of the Mikkola sisters begins for the reader on the final night of 1999, as they head to a massive New Year’s Eve party in Stockholm. The three sisters are introduced through their distinct temperaments: Ina, the eldest at twenty-four, is practical and protective; Evelyn, twenty-one, is charming and storytelling-inclined; and Anastasia, nineteen, is the “crazy,” high-energy sister. At the party, Ina meets Hector, a man with a “cluster bomb of freckles” on his nose whose voice sounds like a compliment. Despite her height Ina is freakishly tall and often bends her knees to hide it she finds an immediate connection with Hector, even as she fears he will be stolen by her more magnetic younger sisters.
Parallel to this, the narrator, Jonas, recounts his own childhood memories of the sisters. He first hears their name at age five or six, as a “word” his parents argued about in French Mikkola. It is revealed much later that the sisters’ mother, whom the narrator calls Selima, and Jonas’s father had a deep, complicated history in Tunisia before they both emigrated to Sweden. In 1991, the Mikkola family moves into the narrator’s neighborhood, Drakenberg, where the three sisters, looking like boys with outgrown bowl cuts, become a source of fascination for the local children.
The childhood in Drakenberg is defined by the “Dragon” jungle gym and a set of mystical rules imposed by their mother. These rules never tell anyone about themselves, always wear their necklaces, and a specific ritual involving earlobes and knocking on wood to ward off compliments are the first signs of the “Curse”. The sisters believe they are “high-energy people” under an ultra-strong curse: everything they love will be taken from them.
A pivotal moment occurs in August 1993, when Evelyn and Jonas witness a JAS 39 Gripen fighter jet crash during an air show on Långholmen. While the city falls into a “silence of shame,” Evelyn breaks down in tears, convinced that her “energy” caused the crash. This incident solidifies the bond between her and Jonas, a friendship that Jonas eventually sabotages by trying to be “honest” about the rumors surrounding her mother.
As the millennium begins, Anastasia loses her art studio due to her erratic behavior and the chaos caused by her drug-addicted boyfriend, Mathias. She moves in with Ina, who has just bought a flat in a brown eight-story high-rise, seeking stability. Ina and Hector’s relationship deepens, despite Hector’s parents Ingrid and Enzo interrogating Ina about her “unstructured” background. The narrator’s father, meanwhile, sinks into a depression after being diagnosed with diabetes, eventually stopping work and disappearing from the family’s life.
Book 2: 2003 – The Search for Roots and the Reality of the Curse
In 2003, Anastasia travels to Tunisia to take a language course at the Bourguiba Institute. In a strange twist of fate, she is picked up at the airport by Jonas’s father, who offers her his apartment in Tunis rent-free because he “knew their mother”. In Tunisia, Anastasia enters a passionate relationship with Daniela, a German-Tunisian engineering student. Their bond is tested by Anastasia’s insistence on the “energy” between them and her belief in the family curse. The relationship ends abruptly after Daniela suffers an electric shock while trying to fix the apartment’s meter an incident Anastasia interprets through the lens of her “electric” curse.
The narrator, Jonas, follows a similar path a year later, studying in Tunis and dating Fazila, who believes in guardian angels and curses. During this trip, Jonas’s father finally reveals the origins of the Mikkola curse: it involves their mother, who supposedly stole her sister Selima’s passport to escape to Europe in their youth. The “curse” was actually a vengeful utterance by the abandoned sister.
Back in Sweden, Ina and Hector’s world is defined by the founding of Slakthuset (Slaughterhouse Books), an underground publishing house dedicated to “uncomfortable” and “unpublishable” texts. Hector, who has resigned from his university post in protest of a colleague’s (Lagerhjelm) predatory behavior toward students, pours his savings into the venture. Anastasia attempts to have Slakthuset publish her mother’s fragmented, poetic journals “The Ticking Curse” but Hector and his partners reject it as “crazy” and “unpublishable”.
Book 3: 2009 – Success, Envy, and the Acting Path
By 2009, the sisters have reached their thirties. Ina is a mother of three and a successful tax professional, though she feels increasingly alienated from her husband’s high-concept publishing world. Evelyn is in a long-term relationship with Simon, a high-profile human rights lawyer. Despite Simon’s success, Evelyn remains stuck in her retail job, feeling that her life is “on pause”.
The dynamic between the sisters shifts when Evelyn’s friend Cecilia applies to drama school. Encouraged by a teacher with purple hair, Evelyn also auditions and is accepted into the prestigious program, while Cecilia is rejected. This betrayal fractures their friendship and fuels the sisters’ internal competition.
The narrator, Jonas, moves to Berlin on a fellowship and meets Diane, the woman who will become his wife. His life in Berlin is characterized by a “constant criticism” from an inner voice he calls the “Hyena” a manifestation of his father’s judgmental presence that makes it difficult for him to connect with the world.
Book 4: 2013 – The New York Exodus
In 2013, the sisters travel to New York City. The trip is ostensibly research for Evelyn’s final monologue at drama school, which centers on their great-grandfather’s supposed role in building Rockefeller Center. The sisters visit the Top of the Rock and take a fake photo on a steel beam, mimicking the iconic “Lunch atop a Skyscraper” photograph.
However, the trip becomes a site of emotional purge. On Coney Island, Evelyn breaks down and delivers a “monologue” that is actually a searing indictment of her sisters, her mother, and her own emptiness. She admits that she hates how they remind her of her aging body and their shared, painful history. When the time comes to return to Sweden, Evelyn stays behind, disappearing into the undocumented life of New York for the next eight years.
During this period, the narrator is rocked by the suicide of his ex-girlfriend, Emma, an event that haunts him for years and eventually informs his decision to write about the sisters.
Book 5: 2020 – The Pandemic and the Collapse of Facades
The arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic brings the sisters’ lives to a crisis point. Ina, during a hiking trip with friends near Ödeshög, discovers her husband Hector is having an affair with a former student, Klara. Simultaneously, her oldest son, Primo, becomes embroiled in the dangerous world of Stockholm’s drill rap scene, leading Ina into a “rescue” mission at a recording studio that results in her further humiliation.
In New York, Evelyn is undocumented and sick, having discovered a lump on her neck. She is tracked down by the narrator, Jonas, who has finally moved to New York on his fellowship. Jonas, having “tamed” his Hyena through therapy involving stuffed animals and voice filters, encourages Evelyn to confront the past.
Anastasia, who has “cashed out” of the advertising world and become religious, focuses on restoring ancient church murals. She provides the financial and emotional anchor for the family as Ina moves into her guest room and Evelyn prepares to return to Sweden for medical treatment.
Book 6: 2022 – The Reckoning in Beacon
In 2022, Jonas and Evelyn travel upstate to Beacon to meet Evelyn’s aunt, Selima the woman whose passport was stolen decades ago. The meeting is the final attempt to “break the curse”. Evelyn enters the house alone and confronts the bitter, aging woman who is the living image of her mother.
Returning to Sweden, the three sisters reunite in a hospital room to receive Evelyn’s biopsy results. In a rare moment of unity and hope, the doctor informs them that the lump is benign she is going to be okay. For the first time in their lives, the “curse” seems to have been broken, or perhaps was never real at all.
Book 7: 2035 – The Final Minute
The narrative concludes in 2035, at the deathbed of the “beginning of everything” (revealed to be the aunt Selima). Surrounded by her grandchildren, she reflects on the day her niece visited her thirteen years earlier. She admits that she had put the “curse” on her sister out of pure jealousy for the life in Europe she never got to have. The ceremony with the strands of hair in Beacon was the aunt’s way of asking for forgiveness. As she draws her last breath, she realizes that the curse was sustained only by her sister’s guilt. The novel ends with the death of the old woman, as her youngest grandchild, Mona, tells her it is okay to let go.
Key Thematic Components
- The Architecture of Time: The book’s structure itself is a “countdown” that mirrors the sisters’ internal feeling that time is running out or passing too fast.
- The “Sisters” Paradox: Despite their intense love and loyalty, the sisters act as each other’s primary sources of envy and self-loathing.
- Displacement and Heritage: The Swedish-Tunisian identity is portrayed not as a bridge between cultures, but as a “no-man’s-land” where the characters feel like “tourists” even in their own histories.
- The Myth of the Builder: The obsession with the great-grandfather at Rockefeller Center represents a desperate need for the sisters to feel they “belong” to a lineage of creation and permanence rather than madness and flight.
The Sisters is a meticulous accounting of what it means to be part of a family, showing that while we may inherit our parents’ trauma, we also possess the “high energy” required to redefine our own stories.
