Johanna Holmström

This ambitious historical novel spanning more than a century tells a tragic story based in reality.
Translated by Fiona Graham.

‘The real world, the one outside, does not want to take her… She refused to obey. They beat her black and blue at the penitentiary but she still did not do what she was told, and they realised in the end that they would have to kill her or send her to hospital. So it was the hospital.'

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.

This novel navigates the complexities of being young, female and Muslim in Finland
Translated by Nichola Smalley

As well as being an impeccably researched biography of Märta Tikkanen, a writer who became a Nordic feminist icon, Johanna Holmström’s Ought to shut up – a book about Märta Tikkanen is a dialogue between its author’s 21st-century #metoo feminism and its subject’s feminism of the 1970s and 1980s.

Celebrating Women in Translation Month, with a selection of writers and works presented in translation on Swedish Book Review.

Lucid Dreams: A User’s Manual is a collection of stories spanning suburbia, science fiction, loneliness, violence and sheer horror from Johanna Holmström, a past master of uncomfortable writing.