Reviews

A closer look at the development of strikes that homes in on different aspects of industrial conflict, Jesper Hamark’s Strike. From Dark Satanic Mills to the Gig Economy offers some interesting ideas on the trade unionism and capitalism of today.

A heinous criminal - or criminals - stalk the alleys, passages, churches and walls of medieval Visby. No one is safe until Thierry of Liège doggedly gets to the truth in Dick Harrison’s latest crime fiction.

A loosely autobiographical tale of touring musicians, anxiety, suicide and drug use, narrated in nail polish colours, Moa Romanova’s Off the Rails is an image-driven, witty and moving account of friendship.

Set in the South of France and inspired by cinema, Nina Wähä’s novel Babetta is a mysterious story of friendship in which nothing is as it seems.

Have you ever dreamt of spending your summers on a remote Swedish island? Well, that’s exactly what the main character in Oskar Kroon’s children’s novel Waiting for the Wind gets to do in this heart-warming tale about freedom, sadness, loneliness, love, death, friendship and the sea.

Åke Smedberg, one of Sweden’s best-loved contemporary writers, presents a very Swedish genre: nature lyricism running like a red thread through a narrative, illuminated by bittersweet reminiscence.

Manda and her best friend Malin are inseparable. In We'll just ride past, it's them against their small-town world... or not so much ‘against’ but outside it, cycling round the periphery of anything thrilling, as the end of the school year looms and with it the end of their compulsory education.

Kayo Mpoyi's Kitoko (meaning ‘beautiful’) is the touching story of how a little girl helps her father find hope again.

Lucid Dreams: A User’s Manual is a collection of stories spanning suburbia, science fiction, loneliness, violence and sheer horror from Johanna Holmström, a past master of uncomfortable writing.

The most brilliant and beautiful woman you never saw in the best debut you’ve ever read? Collected Works braids three characters into an unforgettable story.

Saturated with the sights, sounds and tastes of Ermoupoli and loaded with simmering tensions, Hanna Johansson’s Antiquity is a suggestive exploration of desire, power, and the endless shifts of memory.

The Twin Sisters is a captivating story about closeness, distance and exclusion, following the life of two young girls adopted from a Thai orphanage by a Swedish couple.

The voices of writers and poets from across the Sámi lands of northern Sweden, Norway, Finland and Russia ring out with the clarity of reindeer bells in Sápmi from the Inside: Testimonies from Stolen Land.

In Seluah Alsaati’s Not Your Baby we meet Samira: star football player and burgeoning rapper, perhaps the next Cardi B. She knows who her friends are, and what she wants from a guy – three simple demands, nothing complicated. Then she meets Nabil, and her whole world is turned upside down ... and not totally for the better.

‘The absurd is a reality, he thought, forming a snowball between his hands, there’s no need to twist the text to find it, it’s there all the time.’ Year of the Black Moon, a delightful but troubling existential detective novel, follows a disillusioned scholar on an epic quest for clues and meaning when his normal life is derailed by concussion.

'Published author looking to buy an apartment in south Helsinki. Offer me a good price, and I’ll write you a book!’ So begins The Red Room, a novel about dominance, submission, manipulation, and the darker side of human relationships that unfortunately fails to fulfil its potential.

Margit Silberstein’s Children of the Holocaust is an important story to tell in today’s transcultural Sweden, as the discussion of migrant/postmigrant identity is an increasingly relevant topic in the political and cultural discourse.

An account of a remarkable court case against the most unlikely of criminal gangs – private home care providers – is followed by well-informed commentary, case histories and interviews in The Home Care Mafia. Finally, a piece of journalistic dynamite: a unique list, naming and shaming assorted provider organisations and local authorities.