The forests of Småland are home to a growing population of wild boar, once on the verge of extinction. They move in packs at night. Gardens are destroyed, farmland churned up. Yet their illusiveness draws in both visitors and inhabitants.

Ritve is making a pilgrimage from Finland to track them down. Council worker Glenn finds his quiet life disturbed by their night-time visits and his visions of apocalypse. Mia hopes her local history residency in the old primary school will help her grandfather recover his memory and voice.

Told by three people newly arrived in an isolated community, Wild Boar is a compelling and poetic debut from Finland-Swedish author Hannah Lutz about animals and people, their places in a changing ecosystem, and their capacities to grow and to destroy. Translated from the Swedish by Andy Turner.

— Read more at The Emma Press.

 PEN Translates Award Winner 2025

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‘Wild Boar appears at a critical point in humanity’s reckoning with its responsibility in the rupture of the ecosystems that surround us. Lutz writes with a minimalism that nevertheless reaches fantastic depths of insight into humanity’s uneasy relationship with the natural world and the non-human. Andy Turner’s translation deftly captures the extraordinary density of feeling in these spare pages. This is a book that continues to resonate far beyond its final lines.’ ~ Rowe Irvin, author of Life Cycle of a Moth