Reviews

The book’s strength lies in the interplay between emotions and environment, and the way that is expressed, with the island’s song as the theme tune: ‘the song tonight is so strong I feel as if I could catch it in my hands.’

When a snowstorm descends on the wedding party, it is so cold the knife won’t cut through the wedding cake and the bubbles freeze in the champagne glasses.

It is surprising to learn that we now readily accept the presence of mallards, swans, cormorants, mandarin ducks, tufted ducks, goldeneye and a host of other species, all of which were wholly unknown in urban or built-up areas a hundred years ago.

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.

The question that starts the book is ‘What was the worst thing you experienced?’ Her answer is simple: ‘The moment I was separated from my parents.’

Johannes Anyuru's novel, a searing warning about a possible future, frames a strong message in breathtaking prose.

Elise Karlsson's third novel is a stylistically chilly, pared-back reflection on the workings of our present-day society.

Peter Sandström's Autumn Apples is a masterpiece of understatement, a brilliantly laconic portrait of the sad vicissitudes of life.

'...the situation is hopeless ... Perhaps its serious nature will nonetheless lead us to something that we might almost be able to call hope.’

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.

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