Untranslated

Weyler förlag, 2018, 303 pp

Postwar Poland, 1945. Oskar returns to psychiatric practice after five years in a POW camp. Lila has narrowly escaped pogroms and extermination camps. They will marry and have a family, but never elude the past.

Stalinist Poland, 1968. Lila tells her son Maciej they have to leave; she is Jewish. A life in Sweden beckons. Maciej will become an investigative journalist in the new country, but the greatest investigation of all – into his family’s history – must wait until after the death of his parents, the ‘two towers’.

Recommended by Fiona Graham

Reviewed in SBR 2019:1-2

Albert Bonniers förlag, 2019, 448 pp

Magnus Montelius' novel Eight Months is an unfortunate absence from English-language bookshelves. A satisfying slow burn, the book explores what happens when corporate headhunters are brought in to recruit a new Prime Minister in Sweden following a public scandal, and the problems that arise when there is a peculiar gap in the leading candidate’s CV some two decades earlier… This title was the winner of the 2019 Palle Rosenkrantz Prize for best translated thriller in Denmark, and is currently being produced as an eight-part series for Swedish television. It would be a great fit on many a publishers’ list.

Recommended by Ian Giles

First published by Natur & Kultur, 2003, 303 pp

A mysterious, magically powerful dean at the University of Texas is revered and feared by all, especially his executive assistant – who disappears in the wilderness of the remote Big Bend National Park of far south Texas. In this novel by Lars Gustafsson, a leading Swedish writer, intellectual, and philosopher, a stash of pages found in the assistant’s abandoned vehicle provide a life story and lots of sharp, ironical observations about U.S. academic life, Texas, Austin, and experiences that transcend reality. My translation of a fifty-page excerpt of this novel was awarded the 2011 American-Scandinavian Translation Prize, and the ASF published a 3000-word excerpt in its quarterly review.

Recommended by by Michael Meigs

First published by Albert Bonniers Förlag, 1964, 82 pp

First published in 1964, this is a unique work of prose, freely constructed out of myth, memory, and fable. The fragmentary nature of the human condition, our animal natures, suffering and injustice are recurring themes, drawing at times on the author’s knowledge of ancient Greek, Persian and Sanskrit. While many of his works would be worth translating into English (whether short fiction or drama), Polyfem förvandlad represents a high point and a synthesis of his work. There is simply no other book quite like it.

Recommended by Paul Norlén

Att Föda Ett Barn ('Giving Birth', Norstedts, 2010, 489 pp)
Sörja För De Sina ('Care for One's Own', Norstedts, 2012, 499pp)
Liv Till Varje Pris ('Life at Any Cost', Norstedts, 2014, 554pp)

I must suggest that Kristina Sandberg's Maj trilogy be translated to English. It is an incredibly moving, important and August Prize-winning series of books that disrupts what people think "women's fiction" is. Sandberg tackles issues of gender and class and sets them against recent Swedish history by telling the story of Maj, a working-class woman who becomes an upper-middle-class housewife and mother in the mid-20th-century. Maj challenges the expectations placed on women, trying to find a role for herself in a changing society.

Recommended by B.J. Epstein

Reviewed in SBR 2015:2

Short story compendium
Om snö och guld (On Snow and Gold, Norstedts, 2021, 490 pp)

Inger lives in Stockholm and is a fiction writer, graphic artist, cartoonist and stand-up comedian. She was memorably described by a critic as ‘a remarkable cross between Astrid Lindgren and Franz Kafka’, her stories for young people revealing a fascination with fantasy, fairytale and the gothic.

She excels in the short-story genre and her prose is controlled, sometimes dark and frequently wickedly humorous. She is skilled in the mimicry of everyday language.

She empathises absolutely with the painful lack of self-esteem of the young and vulnerable and explores the multiple faces, dark and light, of what we call ‘love’, notably in the story collections Rit (1991, 'Rite') and Den förunderliga kameleonten (1995, 'The Wonderful Chameleon') and Riktig kärlek (2001, 'Real Love').

I have worked with Inger since the early 1980s, a time when we were told short stories, especially in translation, did not sell. The literary landscape has now been transformed and short stories are hot property. It is high time for a compendium volume of Inger’s best stories in English translation. A number of them have already been published in Swedish Book Review over the years. Or how about starting with her latest title, a novel with autobiographical undertones, set in the 1970s and called Om snö och guld (2021, 'On Snow and Gold').

Recommended by Sarah Death