Reviews highlights series
Recent Gems in Literary Fiction
This summer we are opening up our reviews archive to highlight some recent gems in Swedish-language literature, in lists curated by genre and age group. Whether your interest is in poetry or picture books, searing literature or spine-tingling thrillers, we hope that our reviews highlights will help you to discover something new.
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Image credit: Geran de Klerk on Unsplash.
Välkommen till Amerika(Welcome to America)
by Linda Boström Knausgård, reviewed by Joanna Flower
Modernista, 2016, 91 pages.
‘Välkommen till Amerika is a modern-day Bildungsroman, at once an 11-year-old girl’s revolt against adolescence and a study in depression, written in prose so taut that the emotional and intellectual impact of the story lingers on long after the final page is turned.’
Ingen jämfört med dig(Nobody Compared To You)
by Jonas Brun, reviewed by Andy Turner
Albert Bonniers förlag, 2018, 229 pages.
‘Jonas Brun’s latest novel spans a history that unites past and present, passions and intrigue, secrets and truth. His deceptively effortless and evocative prose entices us into an accelerating series of events, telling a disquieting and engrossing tale of psychological suspense along the way.’
Torka aldrig tårar utan handskar, I: Kärleken (Never Wipe Away Tears Without Gloves, I: Love)
by Jonas Gardell, reviewed by Agnes Broomé
Norstedts, 2012, 291 pages.
‘Torka aldrig tårar... shines a light on a shamefully ignored chapter of Sweden’s modern history with immeasurable sorrow and intense anger but also with warmth and love. If the next two parts of this trilogy bear out the promise of Love, we may all be in the presence of a new modern classic.’
Allt jag inte minns (Everything I Don't Remember)
by Jonas Hassen Khemiri, reviewed by Nichola Smalley
Albert Bonniers förlag, 2015, 334 pages.
‘In Everything I Don’t Remember, Khemiri effectively combines style, narrative and politics to produce a fascinating, moving and highly enjoyable novel that transcends its fictional form. It’s a revelation, very much deserving of the praise it has received from critics and the judges of the 2015 August Prize.’
Händelsehorisonten(Event Horizon)
by Balsam Karam, reviewed by Alice E Olsson
Norstedts, 2018, 155 pages.
‘To say that Karam’s prose is poetic would be an understatement. With a lyricism entirely her own, she stretches grammar to its breaking point. Reading Händelsehorisonten is like stepping into another world – albeit one that feels unsettlingly like our own.’
Finna sig (Supporting Act)
by Agnes Lidbeck, reviewed by Janny Middelbeek-Oortgiesen
Norstedts, 2017, 201 pages.
‘I find it fascinating to see how the writer manages to create a layered protagonist and to make it clear that Anna’s passivity is actually an active choice. The title Finna sig - which means “to comply”, but also “to find oneself’” – neatly captures these aspects of the protagonist.’
Sommarleken (The Summer Game)
by Ellen Mattson, reviewed by Sarah Death
Albert Bonniers förlag, 2016, 233 pages.
‘Mattson takes the familiar children’s book trope of siblings removed from parental authority into new surroundings with potential for adventure and turns it into a real-life drama which, despite the glitter with which Sandra’s romantic eye imbues it, slowly, implacably, unfolds towards tragedy. With its explorations of both adolescence and old age, this is a novel with potentially very wide appeal.’
Jungfrustenen (The Maidenstone)
by Michael Mortimer, reviewed by Nichola Smalley
Norstedts, 2013, 505 pages.
‘It’s not often that I read a book capable of sweeping me off my feet and transporting me to another world while at the same time teaching me, in a very grounded way, things about the world I live in. But that’s just what Michael Mortimer’s novel Jungfrustenen does.’
Det vita huset i Simpang (The White House in Simpang)
by Hanna Nordenhök, reviewed by Janny Middelbeek-Oortgiesen
Norstedts, 2013, 197 pages.
‘The smells and climate of the tropical country, the sexual secrets of the grownups and the colonial circumstances are all brought to life in a very refined, precise and sensitive style. Det vita huset i Simpang is simply a suggestive and wonderful novel.’
Människan är den vackraste staden(Man is the Most Beautiful City)
by Sami Said, reviewed by Alex Fleming
Natur & Kultur, 2018, 367 pages.
‘Sami Said’s third novel unfurls like a modern picaresque: written with swagger and verve, it serves up a mix of vignettes and longer sections on “reliably unreliable” San Francisco’s life and misadventures through cities, islands, ghettos, gardens, and the odd branch of Western Union.’
Att föda ett barn (Giving Birth)
by Kristina Sandberg, reviewed by Deborah Bragan-Turner
Norstedts, 2010, 488 pages.
‘Kristina Sandberg’s monumental trilogy about Maj Berglund, a housewife from the small town of Örnsköldsvik in Västernorrland, on the coast of the Gulf of Bothnia, is a tour de force. In a style that is both spare and intensely personal, the author tells the unseen, unspoken story of daily life for millions of women from the ’30s to the early ’70s – giving birth, caring for their families, and surviving at any cost.’
Laudatur (Autumn Apples)
by Peter Sandström, reviewed by Deborah Bragan-Turner
Kustantamo S&S, 2016, 240 pages.
‘This book is an antidote to the fast pace of modern life. It is to be read slowly, for pleasure ‒ to hear the subtlety, the gentle dialect, the restraint, the comedy and the heartbreak. It is to be savoured and relished, and it will remind you of the joy of reading.’
De utvalda (The Chosen Ones)
by Steve Sem-Sandberg, reviewed by Anna Paterson
Albert Bonniers förlag, 2014, 552 pages.
‘De utvalda is an exceptionally powerful fusion of great fiction and the moral challenges posed by historical record.’
Beckomberga – Ode till min familj (The Gravity of Love – An Ode to My Family)
by Sara Stridsberg, reviewed by Kevin Halliwell
Albert Bonniers förlag, 2014, 355 pages.
‘Stridsberg takes the bare historical facts of a Swedish location and weaves them into something stark and yet hauntingly beautiful, where the darkness merges with the light unceasingly.’
Skugga och svalka(Shade and Breeze)
by Quynh Tran, reviewed by Darcy Hurford
Norstedts, 2021, Förlaget, 2021, 259 pages.
‘Light, shadow. Ambiguity, clarity. Skugga och svalka is an absorbing novel with both shadows and beauty.’
De polyglotta älskarna (The Polyglot Lovers)
by Lina Wolff, reviewed by Kevin Halliwell
Albert Bonniers förlag, 2016, 294 pages.
‘There is so much to take in, so much food for thought in this deep, multi- faceted novel that a single reading is perhaps insufficient. What is certain, however, is that in the wake of its triumph in Sweden, The Polyglot Lovers can look forward to its own polyglot future – and to a richly-deserved international success.’