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2009:1

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Issue number: 2009:1

2009:1

Editor: Sarah Death
Deputy Editor: Neil Smith
Reviews Editor: Henning Koch
 

(Image:  The Öresund Bridge. © Martin Nyman/imagebank.sweden.se)

Let us be upbeat in downbeat times. Everything seems to be coming together, and we can justifiably talk of a new Swedish wave.The seemingly unstoppable Stieg Larsson juggernaut steams on. Kenneth Branagh drew huge audiences for his BBC appearances as Henning Mankell’s Kurt Wallander. This led Boyd Tonkin of The Independent to write in December 2008: “Now we can realistically expect that Henning Mankell’s beyond-genre novels will pick up a substantially enhanced UK readership. They will enjoy the books thanks to the top-level translations by Laurie Thompson, Steven T Murray and Ebba Segerberg. [...] Nordic crime fiction has dug a deep and relatively cosy niche on these shores.” Meanwhile, the UK release of Tomas Alfredson’s box-office success, a poetic and chilling horror film based on the novel Let the Right One In by John Ajvide Lindqvist (now published in English by Quercus, and as Let Me In in the USA by T .Dunne), is eagerly anticipated.

Add to all this the impact of Sweden’s Presidency of the EU in the second half of 2009. Top-class concerts, an Ingmar Bergman film season, and a host of other events are bound to boost the Swedish cultural profile further (for details,see our News & Views page). So what better time to bring our readers another wide-ranging sampler of what Swedish writing has to offer?

Reviews

Compiled and edited by Henning Koch

Book cover

REVIEW

Fienden inom oss

Contrary to the conventional police drama, Jan Guillou's novel raises more questions than it answers, not only about the guilt or otherwise of those eventually convicted, but also about the destruction of aspects of democracy by the very processes that are supposed to protect it.

Poetry

Non-fiction