2023:1
Featuring works by Seluah Alsaati, Mikael Berglund, Malin Ekman, Lyra Ekström Lindbäck, Kaj Korkea-aho, Niklas Rådström and more.
Editor: Alex Fleming
Reviews Editor: Darcy Hurford
Advisory Editors: Deborah Bragan-Turner, Sarah Death, Fiona Graham, Paul Norlen and Linda Schenck
Social Media: Sophie Ruthven
New Books: Alice E Olsson
Photo by Mink Mingle on Unsplash.
Taking us from the mountain wilds of northern Sweden to urban jungles and the plains of our imaginations, the works featured in this spring issue of Swedish Book Review offer a wealth of topographies, themes and styles.
In Mikael Berglund’s lusciously poetic The Aboveground, an encounter between a young nursery worker and a Sámi reindeer herder marks the start of a transformative relationship, while Seluah Alsaati’s YA debut Not Your Baby introduces us to the effervescent Samira, star football player and burgeoning rapper, as she navigates friendships and love.
In the mesmeric The Bleed, Lyra Ekström Lindbäck questions what it means to feel something ‘for real’, while Kaj Korkea-aho’s The Red Room delves into a charged world of power and desire, probing how far we are prepared to go to realise our own, and others’, dreams.
Malin Ekman’s wistful, searching literary debut charts an anxious childhood through simmering family relationships, and ever-perspicacious Niklas Rådström ponders what football may have to teach us about cooperation, justice and democracy.
We continue our tour of Sweden’s literary landscapes in our features section, as Anna Maria Hellberg Moberg brings us an overview of Värmland’s literary scene, past and present, while Ulla Forsén explores the work going on behind the scenes of Gothenburg’s new status as a UNESCO City of Literature.
Our reviews section features an array of new Swedish-language books, from dazzling fiction to playful picture books and insightful non-fiction. We also present a brand-new list of Swedish and Finland-Swedish books to be published in English translation in 2023.
Before moving ahead to our content, we would like to pause to remember Eivor Martinus, a former SELTA chair and SBR contributor who passed away earlier this month. Eivor’s legacy will continue to be felt in both SELTA’s and SBR’s work, and she will be greatly missed.
We would like extend our sincere thanks to Swedish Literature Exchange for their support in producing this issue. We hope that you enjoy reading it.
Translations
TRANSLATED EXTRACT
from Not Your Baby by Seluah Alsaati
Seluah Alsaati's award-winning, razor-sharp YA debut explores what it means to find yourself in a destructive relationship, and how to find your way back to yourself.
Translated by Sophie Ruthven.
TRANSLATED EXTRACT
from Aboveground by Mikael Berglund
An encounter between a young nursery school worker and a Sámi reindeer herder marks the start of a transformative relationship, in Mikael Berglund's suggestive, starkly poetic third novel.
Translated by Anna McGroarty.
TRANSLATED EXTRACT
from Everything I Find in You I Will Find in Myself by Malin Ekman
In Malin Ekman's literary debut, Anna, an observant and introspective first-person narrator, recalls her childhood with an impulsive single mother and younger brother.
Translated by Paul Norlen.
TRANSLATED EXTRACT
from The Bleed by Lyra Ekström Lindbäck
What does it mean to feel something for real? In Lyra Ekström Lindbäck’s latest novel, several voices interrogate this question side by side, probing fiction, reality, and what exists in between.
Translated by Emma Olsson.
TRANSLATED EXTRACT
from The Red Room by Kaj Korkea-aho
Kaj Korkea-aho’s fifth novel Röda rummet is a charged, sensitively hewn text that explores power dynamics and desire, and the extent to which we are prepared to go to realise our own, and others’, fantasies.
Translated by Bradley Harmon.
TRANSLATED EXTRACT
from A little book about football, democracy and how to build a society by Niklas Rådström
In his latest book, Niklas Rådström examines what football might have to teach us about cooperation, justice and peaceful coexistence despite conditions of intense competition.
Translated by Tom Buckle.
Features
FEATURE
The Literature of Värmland, Past and Present
Anna Maria Hellberg Moberg goes back to her writing roots, researching the literary heritage and contemporary authors of her native Värmland.
FEATURE
Gothenburg: Sweden’s First International City of Literature
Ulla Forsén explores the extensive, trans-institutional efforts that helped to secure Gothenburg's status as a City of Literature, and the long-term commitments that this will involve.
Translated by Linda Schenck.
Reviews
curated and edited by Darcy Hurford
Literary fiction
REVIEW
Björnjägarens döttrar
A band of orphans fights for survival – and against each other – in The Bear Hunter’s Daughters, Anneli Jordahl’s feminist retelling of Aleksis Kivi’s Seven Brothers. While the sisters prove that women can do everything men can do, do they really want to?
REVIEW
En handful vind
Ulla-Lena Lundberg and Negar Naseh: two women writers from different generations and cultural backgrounds, with voices as distinctive as the settings of their narratives. Their novels Light and Flame and A Handful of Wind offer spell-binding insights into the landscapes of their minds.
REVIEW
Lyser och lågar
Ulla-Lena Lundberg and Negar Naseh: two women writers from different generations and cultural backgrounds, with voices as distinctive as the settings of their narratives. Their novels Light and Flame and A Handful of Wind offer spell-binding insights into the landscapes of their minds.
REVIEW
Ixelles
Johannes Anyuru is a master of portraying contemporary Western European city life with poetic tenderness. With his latest novel, he takes us to a working-class immigrant neighbourhood in Antwerp, where a mother grapples with the dissolving boundaries of the life she has created for her son.
REVIEW
Rum utan titel
In Nina Hemmingsson’s Room Without Title, we follow a woman who is trying to untangle an age-old conundrum: how did she end up in a bad relationship, and why can’t she leave?
REVIEW
Arvejord
A farm in western Finland is passed down through four hundred years of the same family. Inherited Land explores family bonds and traditions, as well as individual personalities and experiences, of generations of the extended Nevabacka family.
REVIEW
Kromosomparken
In Jonas Gren's The Chromosome Park, Ella navigates genetic illness and loss in a world where reflective cloth covers the ground in an attempt to reflect the sun's warmth back into space, and a thousand small, organic volcanoes are utilised to build a protective layer to shield Earth.
REVIEW
Straff
Punishment depicts life in a harsh 1950s boarding school for the children of Sámi reindeer herders, and how those children grapple with their trauma thirty years on.
Graphic novels
REVIEW
Ihågkom oss till liv
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.
Thrillers/Crime
REVIEW
Skriften i vattnet
Hackers, oil, murders and a crime-writer-turned-investigator all meet in The Writing in the Water, a suspense novel by horror-writer-turned-crime-writer John Ajvide Lindqvist.
REVIEW
Bara Ett Litet Mord
A green-fingered resting actress and her poker-playing nephew solve crimes in the Swedish countryside in Carin Hjulström’s cozy crime novel Just a Small Murder.
Fiction for children and teenagers
REVIEW
Ni är inte min mamma
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.
REVIEW
Om du möter en björn
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.
REVIEW
Yani
Yani is a coming of age novel dealing with friendship, love, grief, belonging and what to do when your best friend is threatened with deportation.
Poetry
REVIEW
Dröm, baby, dröm
Dream Baby Dream by Jenny Tunedal is a tour de force attempt to come to grips with the overwhelming oppression of grief, and it has been lauded by critics across the board in Sweden.
Non-fiction
REVIEW
Sidenkatedralen och andra texter
A diverse collection of essays and other texts by the former permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, Sara Danius, The Silk Cathedral and Other Texts delves into everything from photography to Svetlana Alexievich to Flaubert, always with a keen eye on style.
REVIEW
Kvinnorna som formade pophistorien
Anna Charlotta Gunnarson follows her critically acclaimed and August Prize-nominated book Pop Rhymes with Politics with The Women that Shaped Pop Music History, in which she uncovers women who have played an integral part in the development of the popular music industry.
REVIEW
Det fallna imperiet: Ryssland och väst under Vladimir Putin
An in-depth and readable analysis of Russia and its leadership in the post-Soviet era, The Fallen Empire looks at the developments, events and rhetorical manoeuvres that led the country where it is today.
REVIEW
Älvan och jordanden. En biografi om Mirjam Tuominen och Torsten Korsström
Tuva Korsström’s latest work is an autobiographical essay that expands into a double biography of her parents.
Generously supported by the Swedish Literature Exchange at the Swedish Arts Council.
