from Lame Brag
by Cecilia Vårhed
Introduced and translated by Corinne Platten
The wild, surreal and humorous graphic novel Fattigt skryt (‘Lame brag’) is Cecilia Vårhed’s eagerly anticipated debut. Published in the fall of 2023 by Galago, the novel follows the trials and travails of Darling, a twentysomething queen of freeloading whose life spirals after she breaks up with her cowardly, cheating boyfriend. Aided by pick-n-mix sweets, decadent adventures and her co-dependent group of friends, Darling tries to overcome her heartache.
Drawn in a style inspired by manga but with a twisted and expressionistic flair, Fattigt skryt is a trippy saga about broken love, class, friendship and the quest to land on one’s feet. Darling and her friends rove around Stockholm, partying frantically, dating desperately and maintaining a robustly cynical perspective on life. With Fattigt skryt, Cecilia Vårhed captures the spirit of the time, in a way that is both deeply funny and quietly melancholic.
from Lame Brag
Fattigt skryt
Galago, 2023, 232 pages
Foreign rights: Sofia Olsson, Ordfront förlag
We are grateful to the publisher and author for permission to publish this translated extract.
Cecilia Vårhed studied at the Comic Art School in Malmö and at Konstfack, the University of Arts, Crafts and Design in Stockholm, and is a regular contributor to various Swedish comics magazines. Fattigt skryt, her debut, was reviewed by Darcy Hurford in SBR 2024:1.
Corinne Platten is a Swedish-American translator, editor and journalist. She translates from English to Swedish, Swedish to English and from French to both Swedish and English. In 2023, she received the Swedish Academy’s French Scholarship. Most recently, she translated Ursula K. Le Guin’s essay 'The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction' into Swedish, which was published by Stockholm-based Galago.