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Image from the graphic novel: Nobody suspects that Nils will die just a week later.
Photo: Melanie Garanin / Carlsen
Nils is often sick and has to lie in bed for days with a high fever.
He is the youngest of four children in the Garanin family - even before he was born, they called him "little star".
His favorite food is pancakes, he also likes to stroke horses and ladybugs, and he loves flying geese because they remind him of the stories of Nils Holgersson.
When the illness began, Nils was two years old.
The diagnosis is: leukemia - cancer.
Clinic.
Oncology.
Constant blood sampling.
General anesthetic.
MRI.
But after a few weeks there is reason to be hopeful, because the tests show surprisingly good values.
A short, happy time begins with birthday celebrations and Easter holidays on the Baltic Sea.
At some point, however, Nils got a bad stomach ache, a very bad stomach ache.
And as if living with a diagnosis of leukemia and navigating the ups and downs of the disease weren't terrible enough, doctors don't really take abdominal pain seriously.
The stomach pain becomes extremely bad.
In July 2015, Nils died of an inflammation of the pancreas.
He is three years old then.
The suspicion that a malpractice could be to blame is there from the start.
One doctor in this book is called "Queen Dr. Antibiotika-Aber", another ruthless doctor is called "Dr. Flachbart".
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Melanie Garanin: Your book is a memory, but also a declaration of love
Photo: Carlsen
The illustrator and narrator Melanie Garanin is the mother of Nils, and she has drawn and written a graphic novel about the short life of her son.
"Nils. Of death and anger. And courage" is such a heartfelt book that you have tears in your eyes while reading it and later clench your fists in your mind.
Because the story goes on for a few more chapters after Nil's death and develops into a case: a forensic doctor appears, an autopsy is made, after all, a public prosecutor and medical experts are involved.
A stroke of fate becomes a work of art
On the pages that tell about it, Melanin Garanin's drawings are mainly gray and black, only sometimes a little yellow shines out between the dreary colors.
Hope Flames Yellow.
For a few weeks Garanin only draws animals, 159 animals with a candle on their head, simply because she feels connected to her deceased son during this activity.
"Cheerful. Sad. Friendly. Tragic. Funny. Angry. Courageous. Comforting animals. Nils is very close to me in this work. (Mainly in an advisory capacity)."
This book is many things at the same time: First of all, the memory of a little boy who looks like so much personality in every single picture that you as a reader immediately fall in love with him.
His siblings do everything to distract and cheer him up, lounging with him on the sofa and picking blueberries for pancakes.
None of them suspects that Nils will die just a week later.
In this respect, the book is also a declaration of love to his siblings, to Artur, Greta, Julius, who now have to live without their brother.
And to Georg, the husband and father, who is shown in almost all pictures as an ally of his wife.
But Melanie Garanin succeeds more, she transforms a stroke of fate so heavy that it could easily have buried a whole family into an astonishingly coherent work of art brimming with love, humor and imagination.
Especially when one is completely exhausted by Nils story, a bright, colored picture or a joke comes that defies all sadness.
Talking stones appear and finally - "Trippel, trappel, screams, shuffle, stilt, stamp, dance, shuffle, rattle, rattle, trap, clicker, tug, flutter, swing" - a huge army of helpful knights.
Garanin captured the many reluctant feelings that entwined Nils story in stunning drawings and very personal texts.
With her pen, she stood up to fate.
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