Reviews
Curated and edited by Darcy Hurford
REVIEW
Brev till mannen
In Letters to Men, comedian, actress, and author Bianca Kronlöf addresses the men in her own peer group to ask for their loyalty, help and commitment to the feminist struggle for gender equality.
REVIEW
Den uppgrävda jorden
Graphic novelist Lisa Wool-Rim Sjöblom’s first work, Palimpsest, was an exploration of her own adoption from Korea to Sweden. In Excavated Earth, a moving, painful work, she continues her artistry and advocacy by analysing adoptions – or, more accurately, baby thefts – from Chile to Sweden.
REVIEW
Strejk. Frän satans svarta kvarnar till gigekonomin.
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.
REVIEW
Herrens år 1400
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.
REVIEW
På glid
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.
REVIEW
Babetta
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.
REVIEW
Vänta på vind
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.
REVIEW
Jag faller som en sten genom tiden genom livet
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.
REVIEW
Vi ska ju bara cykla förbi
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.
REVIEW
Kitoko
Kayo Mpoyi's Kitoko (meaning ‘beautiful’) is the touching story of how a little girl helps her father find hope again.
REVIEW
Handbok i klardrömmar
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.
REVIEW
Samlade verk
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.
REVIEW
Antiken
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.
REVIEW
Konferensen
Mats Strandberg’s The Conference sees a whole municipal department running for its life.
REVIEW
En ensam plats
A Lonely Place, Kristina Sandberg's eighth book, is a moving, unsparing memoir that explores the period when Sandberg had breast cancer.
REVIEW
Inifrån Sápmi: Vittnesmål från stulet land
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.
REVIEW
Inte din baby
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.
REVIEW
Den svarta månens år
‘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.