Prospectors who can smell money. Big money, or they would have stayed in the sun. Like diviners, they put their ear to the granite and say, “Here lie such extraordinary riches that no-one will be able to refuse.” When the fun is over, they are already far away. Far from poisoned watercourses and contaminated ground, far from unemployed miners whose lungs have breathed in silica, asbestos and diesel fumes.

In the latest instalment of the Millennium series, spring returns to Sweden’s far north, but a night-time explosion destroys a historic river bridge in the forest, shocks the residents of the small town of Gasskas and leaves the police playing catch-up in a fast-moving situation. Natural resources in the region are being shamelessly exploited by shadowy multinationals and their local government puppets, opposed only by Lisbeth Salander’s niece Svala and a group of environmental activists. What begins as a protest spins out of control when a young journalist is found murdered. Lisbeth’s long-term sidekick, journalist Mikael Blomkvist, not in the best of health, is about to move north from Stockholm to become the editor at of the local newspaper and be near his daughter and grandson. He  unravels a story that has the makings of an explosive scandal. Lisbeth, meanwhile, is desperate to track down her old hacker friend, Plague, who has vanished. When it becomes clear that both she and Svala are on a secret underworld hit list, Lisbeth decides to stake everything on keeping Svala safe.

When Martina, a student at Stockholm University, finds a note on her desk that says ‘Gustav called’ and wonders who he is, she has no idea that she’s about to fall in love. The first-time reader of Maken (literally ‘The Mate’) is equally unprepared for the turbulent relationship that they are about to have with Martina’s story.

Gun-Britt Sundström’s novel has engaged and provoked readers since it was published in 1976. It has appeared in several editions and continues to provide such contemporary authors as Sara Stridsberg with a source of inspiration. The concept of the Maken divorce became familiar in the 1970s, when wives realized they didn’t need to be married to be happy – and indeed might be happier alone.

The couple spend seven years of their lives, more or less, involved in a relationship that begins as a meeting of twin souls – Martina feels he’s not her other half, but rather her other whole – but quickly begins to show cracks. Gustav claims he’s found the love of his life and is eager to marry. Martina has come to the realisation that marriage is something that doesn’t suit her temperament, while new discoveries, conversations with strangers, and freedom do. In one scene, she pulls deep draughts on her pipe, blissful that she has no foetus to consider. Their negotiations, accusations and attempts to accommodate their needs for sexual intimacy, space and commitment form the core of the book; student life in Stockholm in the 1970s provides the backdrop.

This new addition to Norvik Press’s well-established ‘Lagerlöf in English’ series turns the spotlight on the power of short stories. The volume contains a carefully chosen selection of Nobel laureate Lagerlöf’s most important stories covering a range of themes, genres and periods of her career, translated by an experienced and prize-winning trio of Lagerlöf translators, Linda Schenck, Peter Graves and Sarah Death.

Key autobiographical pieces, morality tales both dark and light, legends from several lands and folklore-inspired narratives combine to reveal the breadth and stylistic range of Lagerlöf’s storytelling skills.

This is a collection of interest to general readers but also a useful teaching tool for Swedish and comparative literature courses around the world. The book includes a comprehensive and accessible introduction by Lagerlöf specialist Bjarne Thorup Thomsen (University of Edinburgh).

Erik Mattsson has long been an expert in meeting techniques and has written practical and entertaining handbooks on getting people to communicate. In this book, he teams up with Pia Moberg to add a cross-cultural dimension and the book looks at different expectations and assumptions that can derail successful communication. In the post-Covid era, practical tips for running in-person, online and hybrid meetings are a key feature.

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

————————————–

‘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

Excerpt

I Want You to Come Now!

I want you to come now!
I want you to come now at the latest!
Bring your pocket calculator.
And your grand piano.
Bring band-aids aspirin eau de cologne and antiseptic soap
a bottle of seltzer a bottle of gin a bottle of whisky
and toothbrush mug
a bottle of Ajax and a large pack of sleeping pills a houseplant
a pizza
and a respirator.
I want you to come now!
Only you, come now at the very latest!
And take me by storm.
Turn out the lights.
And light the candelabras.
Unplug the telephone jack.
And blow up the air mattresses.
Dry my tears and try to talk some sense into me.
When the sun sinks down behind the Opera House.
And it’s time to go home.
Then you must come to me.
With your heart.
And your shotgun.
So that I never lose my temper again.
In a tastefully furnished living room.
So I never climb onto the window ledge again.
Looking a bit stupid.
With a dog rose in my hand.
So I never creep through the subways again
with an embarrassing song.
On my broken lips.
You have to come now, now at the very latest!
Because I can’t stand it otherwise.
Because it’s so damn persistent.
Because I’m just an ordinary woman.
Healthy and moderately overweight.
Somewhat domestic, helpful, and nervous.
Kind and sweet and very scared.
With general interests and an untapped literary vein.

“The story of the legendary Swedish psych rock band Träd, Gräs och Stenar is also a defining story of alternative culture. Across multiple incarnations, the musicians of this iconic group (whose name translates to “Trees, Grass and Stones”) have drawn on their roots in jazz and the avant-garde, the iconoclastic art and theater of the 1960s, and the back-to-the-land “green wave” movement to blaze a pioneering trail across fifty years of endlessly improvisational, resolutely DIY rock and roll jams.

In this book, the collective’s members tell their story for the first time, accompanied by a vast archive of photographs, newspaper clippings, posters, flyers, album covers, and paintings. With its in-depth oral history and rich visuals, this book provides valuable insight into over five decades of internationally-renowned musical and countercultural innovation.”

– Anthology Editions 

THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER
WINNER OF THE AUGUST PRIZE 2023

I’m fizzing. I love not being his son.
Yes. I can feel it in my whole body. A great thrill – as if an adventure has begun. As if I’m the boy in a book about a boy who finds out his dad is the king of a magical and distant land.

Christmas, 1983. In the aftermath of yet another furious argument, seven-year-old Andrev’s mother lets him in on a secret: his father is, in fact, not his father. And so begins a new kind of childhood, in which fathers come and go, arriving in red Volvos and sweeping his mother off her feet. Fathers can be magicians or murderers, artists or canoe enthusiasts, and, like growing pains, or the weather, they appear uninvited and leave without warning. Fathers are drawn to his mother like moths to a flame – but even she can’t control how they behave.

Vivid and joyful, raw and tender, Bloody Awful in Different Ways is a novel about growing up in the chaos of social change; about how love begins and ends; and above all, about men. Because after all, you learn an awful lot about this strange species when you have seven fathers in seven years.