Reviews

As in Alejandro Almenábar’s 2001 film ‘The Others’, the encounters with the dead challenge and unsettle our perception of reality.

Nothing is what it seems in Edenborg’s counterfactual historical romance.

The thriller lives!

Readers will surely ponder these perceptive, thought-provoking essays long afterwards.

A comic book with kidnappings, changelings, fortunes sought and happy homecomings.

The setting, the ‘Indian village’ – a nickname for the flats belonging to the local Volvo factory – symbolises the democratic dream of providing a decent life for all workers. But the dream of equality is trashed by the brokenness of those who live there today.

Kristina Sandberg’s monumental trilogy about Maj Berglund, a housewife from the small town of Örnsköldsvik, is a tour de force.

We have two different parents: one called Yeltsin, the other Putin.

Saga is a strong female character; it’s a delight to read a novel about a teenage girl who finds her own way and isn’t afraid of being different.

‘Bonsai cats’ are cats which were stuffed into glass vessels as kittens to restrict their physical growth and so become moulded into an unnatural shape at the will of their owners. Human children may, in a comparable way, be brought up forcibly conditioned, in the social bottles adults squeeze them into.

One should expect nothing less from a press born of the short-lived magazine Const Literary (P)review.

Sem-Sandberg is a masterly analyst who has chosen to present his observations in fiction rather than in historical works.

A modern-day, working-class Swedish Miss Marple.

This book will appeal to those looking for an unusual retelling of a world classic, this time by two children playing ‘Let’s Pretend’.

When Emilia finally ‘comes home’, little of what she remembers still stands in the new Euro-Poland. What was that past of hers – a dream?

Beckomberga Hospital was once Europe’s largest mental institution.

Her Stockholm is cold, exposed and lonely, and her protagonist and narrator more often than not wanders the streets alone, rejected by both lovers and society.

Do not choose to read it alone, in a house with many large, curtainless windows, standing on its own.