Chapter 1: Frodo's Disappearance 1 FRODO'S DISAPPEARANCE
It was only in late March 2018, as fate would have it just weeks after the publication of Carl Cederström's peculiar article in Svenska Dagbladet about Jordan B. Peterson's 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos,I that I seriously came to understand what a truly incendiary, if not scandalous, figure the Canadian psychologist cut, among not only ordinary folk but also people in my own social circle.

My girlfriend, Maria, who was by this point fairly instrumental in managing my social life, and at whose place I was increasingly spending the night, had decided to invite her friend Agnes, a PhD student in art history, and Agnes's partner, Otto, a historian of ideas, over for dinner one Friday evening at her apartment on Linnégatan in Gothenburg.

Otto was a few years past thirty, as was I, and Agnes a few below, like Maria. Maria was a pretty good cook (we were both big fans of Anthony BourdainII) and had prepared a lamb casserole that had had to spend most of the afternoon on the stove.

She had warned me, though.

It would be a good idea to tread softly, so to speak, with Agnes and Otto (and be a little extra nice to them), since just a few weeks earlier their cat, Frodo-so named after the hero in The Lord of the Rings-had fallen from their third-floor window and subsequently vanished without a trace. One of them, either Agnes or Otto, had forgotten to shut the kitchen window. They had found claw marks on the window ledge, Maria told us. Poor Frodo, a rather diminutive cat, must have been-or at least so I imagined as Maria recounted the story-nonchalantly sniffing around by the window, surveying the street outside, when all of a sudden he lost his balance; in full-blown panic he would have scrabbled at the window ledge, only to slowly but surely-and possibly to the screech of splayed claws on metal (like in a Tom & Jerry cartoon)-lose his grip completely, at which time he must have plunged headlong in the darkness and cold and down onto the pavement, where he, Frodo, this patently indoor cat, hella terrified by the wider world, would presumably have perished. Agnes and Otto hadn't given up hope, mind; they had plastered half of Kungsladugård and Majorna with posters of little Frodo. Beneath a photo of the timid cat, the whole sorry tale was described. The infuriatingly unshut window. The claw marks on the window ledge. Frodo's putative nosedive onto the hard tarmac below.

So, Frodo had already been gone a few weeks, and, according to Maria, who knew Agnes well, it was clear that they had started to lose hope just a tad. Maria told me she had heard it in Agnes's voice when they had last chatted. Notwithstanding all that, I'd venture to say that spirits at dinner were high. Maria and Agnes mostly reminisced about their student days in Lund, and there was only the odd mention of Frodo. Like when Agnes talked about how much she missed the little cat, while Otto caressed her back with a very serious and strained expression, torn between the urge to comfort Agnes and to scrutinize our reactions; as though Otto, model boyfriend that he was, nevertheless to some extent presumed that I, mainly-at whom he cast a suspicious glance when Agnes was perilously close to tears-actually found the whole story, and, indeed, this whole pet fixation, pretty ridiculous, which was basically true. It was awkward. Agnes valiantly squeezed her boyfriend's hand. They would get through this together. "Yes, yes, we will, Agnes. We will get
"Darkly, deeply funny, and acclaimed abroad, this biting satire" (Booklist) follows an over-educated, under-employed man as he struggles to complete his novel and get his life together over the course of one scorching Swedish summer.

Convinced of his own moral and intellectual superiority, the nameless protagonist of this debut novel is also paralyzed by self-consciousness. Yet, inspired by Stephen King's On Writing, he decides to dedicate four hours a day to work on his own novel over the course of one summer. Only, he must also balance his creative goals with a part-time government job and looking after his girlfriend's possibly brain-damaged Pomeranian dog.

Too bad he's uninspired by his job, almost kills the dog, and realizes his novel is slowly morphing into misguided fan fiction about French writer and enfant terrible Michel Houellebecq.

Even when he's alone, he can't help but pontificate before an imagined audience, making over-the-top cases for and against all manner of culture war battles and obsessing over identity politics. He's an emblem of all the follies of our age-happily unaware that in his refusal to be ordinary, he's become a walking cliché of misguided manhood.

The Dunning-Kruger Effect is a portrait of a person belatedly coming of age, a blistering takedown of a privileged man who believes he's a revolutionary, and "a crackling firework display of comic brilliance" (Svenska Dagbladet, Sweden).
Andrés Stoopendaal is a Swedish author and literary critic. He ran the literary magazine Dokument for several years and debuted as an author in 2011 with the novel Masquerade. He is also the author of two critically acclaimed poetry collections.