Reviews

An excellent whodunnit as well as a sharp social and psychological drama about peoples’ lives, loves and unavoidable tragedies, The Living and the Dead shows Christoffer Carlsson on home ground in Halland.

Carl Henrik Carlsson's text is a comprehensive and highly readable study of Jewish history in Sweden from the arrival of Aaron Isaac in Ystad in 1774 to the present day.

Luleå, northern Sweden, 1999. Summer is just beginning, and for three boys on the edge of teenagerdom, long months of freedom beckon. In Mikael Yvesand's Hang City adventure is always round the corner – and sometimes right under your nose. If you can see that far.

In Maria Hellbom’s many-layered, enchanting children’s fantasy novels, two pre-teen protagonists team up with age-old, local mythical creatures and animals in order to save their rural community, its people, forests and animals from fire and exploitation.

In Half of Malmö’s Men Have Dumped Me, Amanda Romare takes the reader on a Mr Toad’s wild ride of sex, laughs and disappointment.

In They’re Taking Everything Away from Me, An intense YA novel set in Northern Sweden, Linda Jones describes Frida, a fifteen-year-old coming of age in a community that is falling apart.

In Lotta Geffenblad’s life-affirming and humorous picturebooks about the lovably odd couple Tora and Tytte, size does not matter if you care for one another. Together the couple explores everyday chores with unexpected, hilarious results and a deep sense of the small pleasures of everyday life.

The Story of Bodri is a simple introduction to the Holocaust for young children, told from the perspective of a girl and her beloved dog.

Nominated for 2023 Nordic Council Literature Prize, A Book For Nobody surprises and delights thanks to Isabella Nilsson’s playful approach to writing about difficult topics.

Inger Edelfeldt's Scheherazade-like sequence for today’s fantasy fans weaves an unsettling tale of suppression of freedom in multiple worlds and provides a pithy commentary on the mechanics of storytelling in the process.

Mao’s Hibiscus is a story of a decades’ long friendship between former Maoists, cemented by the obligation to look after a suitcase of money. They eventually invest the money, but their investment has fatal consequences, and everything points to the involvement of the Russian secret services.

In Maria Hellbom’s many-layered, enchanting children’s fantasy novels, two pre-teen protagonists team up with age-old, local mythical creatures and animals in order to save their rural community, its people, forests and animals from fire and exploitation.

This picture book by Annica Hedin takes an innovative approach to exploring knotty moral issues for very young children, aged 3-6 years. It begins with a question – what do we do in secret which we know is wrong, and what happens if somebody notices?

Best known for her poetry, Edith Södergran (1892 – 1923) also left a substantial body of photography. In Another Edith, award-winning book designer Nina Ulmaja analyses some of these photos and links them to Södergran’s biography – and her own.

Stylistically breathtaking, Maxim Grigoriev’s The Rain is a hypnotic ode to a city being hollowed by gentrification, as told through the fragmented conversations of a young group of residents.

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.

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.

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.