Kevin Halliwell

Her novel holds up a distorted mirror and shows them that their writerly approach to women is not without consequence, as if to say ‘Here you are – this is what it looks like from where I’m standing’.

Beckomberga Hospital was once Europe’s largest mental institution.

The plot interweaves fact and fiction and introduces a motley crew of real-life characters – including King Carl XVI Gustaf and Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt – into the narrative.

A shadowy, treacherous epoch, when Europe stood on the brink of war and a dark cloud of fear and intrigue – both personal and political – hung over the continent like an impending plague of locusts.

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.

These plays provide a genuinely compelling narrative experience in their own right.

The second instalment in Alexander Ahndoril’s planned trilogy of novels based loosely on the lives of three living Swedes.

The second volume in Tim Davys’s planned quartet.

The reader is drawn in by Lars Norén’s warts-and-all portrayal of a sensitive but self-centred artist battling with depression and a mid-life crisis.

A curated list of recent gems in Swedish-language literary fiction, as reviewed in Swedish Book Review.

A curated list of compelling historical fiction, as reviewed in Swedish Book Review.