2013:1
Fiction from Lotta Lundberg and Fredrik Lindström, poetry from Ingela Strandberg, and cultural commentary from Nina Björk
Editor: Sarah Death
Reviews Editor: Anna Paterson
(Image: Camping. Credit: Helena Wahlman /imagebank.sweden.se)
The lively cover picture, ‘Camping Tent’ by Helena Wahlman, sets the tone for three of our translated extracts. They all deal in one way or other with people travelling from one culture to another, be they Europeans relocating to distant countries or other nationalities coming to work in Sweden. Lotta Lundberg’s The Island is based on true events on Pitcairn Island in 2004, highlighting tensions between Polynesian tradition and British values. Gunnar Ardelius’s The Love of Liberty Brought Us Here, set in Liberia in the 1960s, gives a postcolonial view of what it meant for Swedes to live and work in Africa.
Fredrik Lindström’s tongue-in-cheek story of the Polish builders employed in Swedish suburbia is told from the jaundiced viewpoint of their hosts: ‘Since we had progressed so far in Sweden, we worked on more advanced things: the media, web solutions, communications, advertising and so on; and as a result we could hire in others to do the harder manual jobs, others who were a couple of steps below us on the ladder.’
These various culture clashes shed light not only on other ways of life but also on the Swedish – and wider European – psyche, and what truly constitutes success, while our non-fiction piece, from Nina Björk’s Happily Ever After, turns the spotlight on western consumer society as a whole, which professes to value equality while surrounding itself with fairytales of success.
The success enjoyed by Swedish crime fiction can scarcely have escaped anyone’s notice, and our article on bestselling children’s writer Martin Widmark turns to the equally buoyant junior variety of the genre. We preview the convergence of Swedish children’s publishers, writers and illustrators on the Bologna Book Fair this spring, where their country is guest of honour.
Poetry features in this issue in two different guises. Hjalmar Gullberg (1898-1961) wrote his poem Död amazon, one of the best-known and most haunting Swedish literary texts of the Second World War, in memory of fellow-poet Karin Boye. Ingela Strandberg is a poet of our own days, and her new anthology draws on dogs, dog stars, starships, human hearts and the natural world to weave its tale. We sample it in the printed version of SBR, and the full English translation appears here on the website.
Bookshelf looks at crossovers: fact and fiction, ‘true crime’ and crime fiction. As our reviews editor writes, we are keen to support what Swedish publishers are keen to sell, but with our own twist.
Translations
TRANSLATED EXTRACT
from The Island by Lotta Lundberg
A novel based on a true event which took place on the island of Pitcairn in the Pacific Ocean.
Translated by Susan Beard
TRANSLATED STORY
The Poles by Fredrik Lindström
A humorous look at the modern human state of always waiting for one more thing before our lives can really start. Translated by Steve Dawson
TRANSLATED POEMS
The Great Silence by Sirius's Nose by Ingela Strandberg
'A fusion of Sylvia Plath and Elisabeth Bishop, [...] with a Swedish sensibility transported half a century forward.'
Translated by Göran Malmqvist
TRANSLATED EXTRACT
from Happily Ever After by Nina Björk
An analysis of contemporary society and the discrepancy between the principle of equal worth and the reality of inequality. Translated by Dominic Hinde
Reviews
Edited and curated by Anna Paterson
Fiction
REVIEW
En storm kom från paradiset
Renowned for his vivid imagery and soul-searching portrayals of contemporary urban life in Sweden, poet and author Johannes Anyuru returns with an intensely personal tale of suffering and determination.
REVIEW
Springfloden
The Börjlinds’ huge experience as scriptwriters – 25-odd Sjöwall & Wahlöö film and TV series, goodness knows how many Arne Dahl and Henning Mankell ones, and a large number of their own contributions – tells at every turn and twist.
REVIEW
Sång till den storm som ska komma
A fusion of fictionalised reportage and interpretative biography.
REVIEW
Torka aldrig tårar utan handskar, I: Kärleken
Shines a light on a shamefully ignored chapter of Sweden’s modern history with immeasurable sorrow and intense anger – but also with warmth and love.
REVIEW
Kajas resa. En roman om ett brott
A readable, fascinating journey into politicised crime, set in a past that feels both distant and very close.
REVIEW
Brev till min dotter
Where Ovid writes his lament in Latin to and for his friends at the centre of the glittering Empire, Kallifatides writes in his adopted language, holding up a comical mirror to his new fellow-citizens, to whom these letters are really addressed.
REVIEW
Vinterträdet
Garbo wants her fellow Swedes to be proud of her for making a film that the whole world admires, and then to let her abdicate from Hollywood stardom.
REVIEW
Fallvatten
The idea of a Swedish disaster story is interesting in itself. The Hollywood output of scare stories is mind-numbing, but something about setting this story in rural Sweden makes it more unsettling than the most imaginative zombie invasion; we expect the Swedish countryside to be safe and uneventful.
REVIEW
vit vit
This is a haunting story in which events are viewed in stream-of-consciousness style through the eyes of a grieving child.
REVIEW
En rasande eld
It makes sense to review these two political thrillers together: both reflect the professional preoccupations of the writers as well as their strongly held and strikingly similar political views, both explore sympathetically the Islamic/Islamist anger that interacts with what is arguably an unlawful Western overreaction, and both are very well informed.
REVIEW
Kautokeino, en blodig kniv
The strength of this first novel set in Lapland is not so much the plot and the whodunit, but rather the account Lars Pettersson weaves around the people eking out a living in this frozen wilderness and their struggle to keep alive local traditions of language and culture.
REVIEW
Alltings början
Saga has just started secondary school when she meets him: the man who is to become her obsession, ‘Stockholm’s most beautiful man’.
Poetry
REVIEW
VERKLIGHETEN NEDTECKNAS, ges ord, förvanskas och blir del av en ny omformad verklighet – dokument kring mordet på Robert Risberg i Uddevalla 960513
Thörn and Persson parody our fascination with crime and play with the conception of what is real by creating a sort of reality fiction.
Non-fiction
REVIEW
Mördaren i folkhemmet
This gripping and absorbing account is real Scandinavian crime and deserves the widest possible readership by those who not only take an interest in crime and justice but also enjoy excellent writing and a compelling narrative.
REVIEW
Fallet Thomas Quick – Att skapa en seriemördarare
This is not some lurid tale of a serial killer, but an examination of what happens when complex social structures such as the legal system or healthcare fall prey to enthusiastic or misguided professionals. This book bites back at the therapists, police and lawyers who for some reason viewed this patient – Sture Bergwall, also known as Thomas Quick – as a professional battleground.
REVIEW
Förbannelsen. Hans Holmérs öde
Åsheden examines her material again and publishes her account of events, hoping to lift the curse still hanging over Holmér’s name.