B.J. Woodstein

Neoscandia is a dystopia set in the future. This graphic novel by Hannele Mikaela Taivassalo and Catherine Anyango Grünewald is a page-turner that merits multiple re-readings and translation.

Journalist Helena Trus writes about her grandmother’s experiences during the Holocaust – a reflection on the trauma of persecution and war through the generations.

Rattle Rustle Walk is a lovely collection of poetry that is just right for young readers and they, like the tree in winter with its leaves falling, will be sad when it is over.

Sara Stridsberg's moving book for children echoes her award-winning adult novel, The Gravity of Love, and is gorgeously illustrated by Sara Lundberg.

The question that starts the book is ‘What was the worst thing you experienced?’ Her answer is simple: ‘The moment I was separated from my parents.’

If this is all starting to sound like a combination of the Harry Potter and Hunger Games series, mixed with Nordic mythology, and with a large hint of Nordic noir added, then that’s a pretty accurate description.

The Katitzi books expose readers to a way of life and to a period of harsh and disturbing stereotyping and discrimination of the Romani people that many may not know much about.

Saga is a strong female character; it’s a delight to read a novel about a teenage girl who finds her own way and isn’t afraid of being different.

This standalone sequel to Tre apor (Three Monkeys) clearly depicts the tension between staying with one’s own kind versus assimilation, and the challenges that come with belonging to various different groups.

In the middle-grade novel Lindormars land, Frida Nilsson writes about the need and desire for love and about the difficult choices we sometimes have to make.

What do you do when the world around you is in ruins?

Outsiders, creativity, challenging boundaries, and finding one’s identity.

Svensson creates neologisms and plays with nursery rhymes, children’s stories, pirate lore, and other intertextual references, making her novel intricate and intriguing.

‘Judaism is a humanity unto itself – as diverse and heterogeneous as all of humanity on our planet.’

This novel explores growing up and growing out of childhood certainties, but also the roads to growing into woman amidst the lying and the beauty.

Saga has just started secondary school when she meets him: the man who is to become her obsession, ‘Stockholm’s most beautiful man’.

How challenging it is to be caught between two – or more – worlds.

Thought-provoking non-fiction on how women are left out of the study of economics and human behaviour, and how this affects human understanding of the world economy.

In Sara Lundberg's The Day of Forgetting, we see that some days are just like that. You forget what you’re supposed to do or where you’re supposed to go. You might even embarrass yourself by getting things wrong. But don’t worry: we all know what it feels like, and we know it does get better.

Mats Jonsson tried to avoid thinking about his Sámi heritage for decades. In When We Were Sámi he realises that he has no choice but to face it and to try to understand where Sámi people fit in Sweden’s history.

Gabriella Ahlström's first novel for adults is unlike other popular contemporary Swedish books in its focus on character over plot, and readers can appreciate its minutely detailed portrait of a woman who is constantly disappointed by her family and aware of their many faults and yet remains faithful and devoted to them.

A Lonely Place, Kristina Sandberg's eighth book, is a moving, unsparing memoir that explores the period when Sandberg had breast cancer.

In In the Hall of Mirrors, Liv Strömquist asks where our obsession with appearance came from, and whether we should try to change the situation.

A curated list of recent highlights in narrative non-fiction, as reviewed in Swedish Book Review.

A curated list of recent highlights in picture books and chapter books for young readers, as reviewed in Swedish Book Review.

A curated list of outstanding fiction for young adults, as reviewed in Swedish Book Review.

Graphic novelist Lisa Wool-Rim Sjöblom’s first work, Palimpsest, was an exploration of her own adoption from Korea to Sweden. In Excavated Earth, a moving, painful work, she continues her artistry and advocacy by analysing adoptions – or, more accurately, baby thefts – from Chile to Sweden.

A moving new graphic memoir about tracing a family lost through the Holocaust, Remember Us To Life grapples not only with the war itself, but also its impact on younger generations and contemporary perspectives on minorities and outsiderness.

You Are Not My Mother and If You Meet a Bear, two new picture books illustrated by Linda Bondestam, have very different narratives and styles, but both reveal an artist at the height of her powers.

You Are Not My Mother and If You Meet a Bear, two new picture books illustrated by Linda Bondestam, have very different narratives and styles, but both reveal an artist at the height of her powers.

The Story of Bodri is a simple introduction to the Holocaust for young children, told from the perspective of a girl and her beloved dog.

A Giraffe’s Heart is Unbelievably Large is a gorgeous, moving middle-grade adventure about acceptance and belonging.

The Skeleton is a picture book about a boy who breaks his arm and learns to conquer his fear of his skeleton.

In Annika Sandelin’s My Flying Grandma, Joel’s parents are off on a trip and have left him behind with a grandma he scarcely knows and has no desire to get to know either. She’s not a good cook, an engaged grandparent, a friend to anyone or a particularly interesting person. Or is she?

Edith Hammar's Portal is a queer graphic novel about finding community and being seen.

Karin Nordin Stensö's The Tender Mother is a graphic memoir about becoming a mother and struggling with the reality of it, as compared to the way it is depicted in art.

Wonder, Anna Ahlund’s older middle grade novel, is about a group of friends who each receive a mysterious postcard and the wonder this brings about.

Elin Lucassi's I love Astrid Lindgren is a moving graphic novel about postpartum psychosis.