2026:1

Charting stories of radicals, trailblazers, dreamers and flounderers, this issue of Swedish Book Review presents a powerful collection of recent works that traverse artistry, memory and the fraught – or galvanising – relationships that bind us.

In translations, Maria Maunsbach presents a delicious, daringly sensual portrait of masculinity and modern love with the irresistible A Magical Man, while Monika Fagerholm returns with the multi-award winning Nowhere Land/Women in Revolt, a hypnotic novel about growth and creativity against a background of latent violence. 

Autobiography meets biography in Mats Kempe’s The Literal Heaven, a poetic, complicated novel of friendship, family, music and loss, and a young expat in Japan grapples with his crumbling existence in Frans Wachtmeister's Lost Ground, an absorbing and stylistically biting take on assimilation, power and identity.

In non-fiction, Fatima Bremmer’s The Pioneers paints a captivating collective portrait of trailblazing women who challenged Sweden's journalistic status quo, while in Eva-Lisa’s Monument Sam Hultin reveals the history of the Swedish LGBTQ movement through the prism of trans pioneer Eva-Lisa Bengtson’s life. 

In features, we review the success and significance of the Drama focus at the 2025 Gothenburg Book Fair from a multi-pronged perspective, through interviews with Hedda Krausz Sjögren, CEO of Colombine Teaterförlag and a driving force behind the project, playwright Isabel Cruz Liljegren and dramaturg Marc Matthiesen.

Finally, Vendela Vida, David Katznelson and Ulf Olsson, editors of a new anthology of classic Swedish short fiction, share their perspective on the magic of the short story, and why their forthcoming ‘treasure chest’ of Swedish writing may surprise contemporary readers.

As ever, our reviews section highlights the breadth and depth of publishing in Sweden today, including reviews of urgent fiction, emotive graphic novels, playful children’s fiction and more. We also present the ever-important data on Swedish and Finland-Swedish books to be published in English translation in 2026.

This issue is unusual in that it marks a changing of the guard on SBR’s editorial board; the last issue under the current editorship and beginning of a new one. On a personal note, it has been an honour to steward this journal through the past six years, and I very much look forward to seeing the fresh directions and perspectives that Henning Koch will bring to the role. 

We would like extend our sincere thanks to Swedish Literature Exchange for their support in producing this issue. We hope that you enjoy reading it.