Reviews

Rattle Rustle Walk is a lovely collection of poetry that is just right for young readers and they, like the tree in winter with its leaves falling, will be sad when it is over.

The old school of fairy tales – the ones that make even adults afraid to walk through the woods alone.

Although the refugee crisis was depicted by press and politicians as a crisis in Sweden, Banke’s book is a timely reminder that the asylum seekers are in fact the ones facing a crisis.

‘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.'

In fact, the word ‘opinion’ has no plural in the local language. While Parisian intellectuals have mooted the idea of a prototypical kilogram, the narrator is startled to discover Thule’s equivalent: a ‘standard national Opinion’, protected by a glass dome.

Hannah Lutz's Wild Boar questions ‘[...] which species, which animals and which people are welcome where? And who decides that?’

The colours may be black and white, but Mattson shows us in beautifully well-weighed language that life seldom is.

Mannerheim’s story is the story of Finland and, as well as being an account of one man’s character and career, the book makes an accessible and engaging introduction to Finland’s twentieth-century history.

‘Always the same question when it comes to people. Whose will was stronger?’

A skilled wordsmith and nature writer, Niemi juxtaposes lyrical pastoral beauty with the grotesque and the hideous. He is able to enchant, lull and repulse in equal measure. This is writing that will make you think.

But we are pulled back from the brink: what if the notion of humanity being in charge is, after all, an enabling, hopeful story to tell ourselves?

Former police officer Anders de la Motte's suspenseful crime novel was nominated Best Swedish Crime Novel Award by the Swedish Academy of Crime Writers.

Although The Sulphur-Yellow Sky begins with a crime, it is not about uncovering a mystery. More than that, it asks how complicit are those who watch, who are involved but not involved, who see but do nothing.

Martin Engberg's entertaining misadventure explores the themes of knowledge, failure, identity and the stresses of academia.

'... it illuminates, with heartbreaking clarity, reality as lived by the individuals who fall through the gaps in international treaties and EU conventions'

What do men want? How is it possible to fulfil their desires, based on their dream of what a woman should be? And how can you escape a marriage that is not your own, but your parents’?

The scandal, according to Kärnstrand and Andersson Åkerblom, is that the same problems have dominated the industry for decades and show little sign of changing.

The second installment in Charlotte Cederlund’s Idijärvi trilogy, a magical YA fantasy that follows teenage misfit Áili in her fight to save her Lapland village from the destructive supernatural forces of the evil Borri noaidi.