An author's warm, moving tribute to his longtime friend and the nuances of a relationship shaped by deep affection, distance, illness, and loss.

I don't know why, but the first word that comes to mind when I recall that meeting with Olga is "period." A black period or full stop. She came into the large living room, said nothing, stood to one side as if the rest of us were a sentence and she was the period at the end of it.

When Theodor Kallifatides met Olga in the 1960s-she was 19, and he in his 20s-it marked the beginning of a friendship that would last more than three decades and profoundly touch his life. Theodor was a relatively new arrival in Sweden, having emigrated from Greece, while Olga was born there to a Greek father and a Russian mother. Part of a multicultural Stockholm community, they bonded quickly and kept in touch throughout a series of separations, enduring the ebbs and flows of jobs and relationships.

One day, Olga calls him with troubling news: her doctor had found a shadow on her lungs, which would turn out to be a fatal cancer. After her death, Theodor writes this simple yet profound novel as a memorial to her. He revisits the memories, encounters, feelings, and reflections sparked by their connection over the years, particularly during Olga's illness. At times, tears well up in his eyes; at others, he cannot stop laughing. A book to cherish, about a woman to love.