Son of Svea: A Tale of the People’s Home
Translator: Sarah Death
Author: Lena Andersson
Publisher: Other Press
Year of Publication: 2022
“This is the story of a twentieth-century Swede. A man without cracks but with a great split running through him, and in this he entirely resembled the society he populated and shaped.”
“Lena Andersson’s epic novel moves through a century of Scandinavian idealism like a winter storm. Son of Svea opens with the founding of social democracy, roars on through the rise of the welfare state and the murder of Olof Palme, and reaches an icy end in the ex-utopian Stockholm suburbs. Lena Andersson has an unparalleled eye for how ideology and family life interweave, turning the myths of modernism into something warmer and more intimate. Andersson’s novel is a powerful ode to the humble people who gave Scandinavia the one thing America misses most of all: upward mobility that is more than just a dream.” —Mikkel Rosengaard, author of The Invention of Ana
“Intellectual, agile, sharp, occasionally uncomfortable, always uncompromising, Son of Svea is a novel about modern Sweden from our most important voice, Lena Andersson. Her crystal-clear prose shapes Son of Svea into an absolute gem of a book.” —David Lagercrantz, #1 bestselling author of The Girl in the Spider’s Web
The Deathwatch Beetle
Translator: Paul Norlen
Author: Kjell Eriksson
Publisher: Minotaur Books
Year of Publication: 2021
A young woman disappears from an island community. Retired detective inspector Ann Lindell wants to know why.
Cecilia, a young Swedish woman, has disappeared from the Baltic island where she grew up. An old friend claims to have seen her in a park in Lisbon. Tangled relationships in a small island community emerge when retired detective inspector Ann Lindell hears about this, and decides to investigate.
The Herd: How Sweden chose its own path through the worst pandemic in 100 years
Translator: Alice E. Olsson
Author: Johan Anderberg
Publisher: Scribe
Year of Publication: 2022
A real-life thriller about a nation in crisis, and the controversial decisions its leaders made during the COVID-19 pandemic.
First, the government instituted no restrictions. Then, it didn’t order the wearing of face masks. While the rest of the world looked on with incredulity, condemnation, admiration, and even envy, a small country in Northern Europe stood alone. As COVID-19 spread across the globe rapidly, the world shut down. But Sweden remained open.
The Swedish COVID-19 strategy was alternately lauded and held up as a cautionary tale by international governments and journalists alike — with all eyes on what has been dubbed ‘The Swedish Experiment’. But what made Sweden take such a different path?
In The Herd, journalist Johan Anderberg narrates the improbable story of a small nation that took a startlingly different approach to fighting the virus, guiding the reader through the history of epidemiology and the ticking-clock decisions that pandemic decision-makers were faced with on a daily basis.
‘In his fine book The Herd, the Swedish journalist Johan Anderberg has chronicled the development of the Swedish policy and how tough it was for its architect, Anders Tegnell, to stay the course as country after country was stampeded into compulsory and comprehensive lockdowns.’
MATT RIDLEY, THE TELEGRAPH
‘A gripping analysis of the Swedish response, which examines how tensions between science, policy and politics heightened as the virus held on. If any book were capable of turning scientific debate into a thriller, this one does so; and for the armchair experts on COVID-19 that many of us have become, it is a must-read.’
FRIEDA KLOTZ, SUNDAY INDEPENDENT
The Antarctica of Love
Translator: Deborah Bragan-Turner
Author: Sara Stridsberg
Publisher: MacLehose Press
Year of Publication: 2021
The story of a young woman’s brief life, her brutal murder, and the world that moves on without her.
A devastating novel about absolute vulnerability, brutality and isolation, by Sara Stridsberg.
Longlisted for the Dublin Literary Award 2023 and the National Translation Award in Prose 2023.
The Lonely Ones
Translator: Sarah Death
Author: Håkan Nesser
Publisher: Pan Macmillan
Year of Publication: 2021
Group dynamics can create aching loneliness when there are dark secrets to be kept, even for the golden youth of Uppsala University. Fasten your seatbelts for DI Barbarotti’s intriguing fourth case.
In 1969, six very diverse young people in the old university city of Uppsala are embarking on their studies. Two are brother and a sister. Two are young men who have just done national service together. One is a class warrior, one a theology student, one a would-be entrepreneur, and one a a future journalist. There are two odd young people who may well be geniuses. The group’s lives become inextricably intertwined, but a summer trip through Eastern Europe changes everything, and when their time at university is over, it also signals the end of something else.
Years later, a lecturer at Lund University is found dead at the bottom of a cliff in the woods close to Kymlinge. And chillingly, it is the very same spot where one of the Uppsala students died thirty-five years before.
We Know You Remember
Translator: Alice Menzies
Author: Tove Alsterdal
Publisher: Harper Collins
Year of Publication: 2021
A missing girl, a hidden body, a decades-long cover-up, and old sins cast in new light: the classic procedural meets Scandinavian atmosphere in this rich, character-driven mystery, awarded Best Swedish Crime Novel of the Year, that heralds the American debut of a supremely skilled international writer.
It’s been more than twenty years since Olof Hagström left home. Returning to his family’s house, he knows instantly that something is amiss. The front door key, hidden under a familiar stone, is still there. Inside, there’s a panicked dog, a terrible stench, water pooling on the floor: the father Olaf has not seen or spoken to in decades is dead in the bathroom shower.
For police detective Eira Sjödin, the investigation of this suspicious death resurrects long-forgotten nightmares. She was only nine when Olof Hagström, then fourteen, was found guilty of raping and murdering a local girl. The case left a mark on the town’s collective memory—a wound that never quite healed—and tinged Eira’s childhood with fear. Too young to be sentenced, Olof was sent to a youth home and exiled from his family. He was never seen in the town again. Until now.
An intricate crime narrative in which past and present gracefully blend, We Know You Remember is a relentlessly suspenseful and beautifully written novel about guilt and memory in which nothing is what it seems, and unexpected twists upend everything you think you know.
The Unnatural Selection of Our Species
Translator: Fiona Graham
Author: Torill Kornfeldt
Publisher: Hero Press
Year of Publication: 2021
With CRISPR-Cas9 and other gene technologies, humanity now has the godlike ability to edit our own genetic material – the human genome.
Out on 22 September 2021.
These revolutionary new tools have huge potential to save lives and prevent untold suffering – but what ethical issues do they raise?
The Story of Bodri
Translator: linda.schenck
Author: Hédi Fried and Stina Wirsén (illustrator)
Publisher: Eerdmans
Year of Publication: 2021
Hédi Fried and Stina Wirsén (illustrator) have created a touching portrait of a Jewish child who survived World War II, and her firm belief as an adult in democracy and human rights.
A painful, true story from a survivor of Auschwitz about her childhood experiences.
The Angel House
Translator: Sarah Death
Author: Kerstin Ekman
Publisher: Norvik Press
Year of Publication: 2021
With this series of novels focused on the lives of ordinary women in the small southern Swedish railway town of Katrineholm, storyteller extraordinaire Kerstin Ekman provides an alternative history and a fine depiction of a town and a society in transition.
The Angel House is the third in the remarkable series of free-standing novels that cemented Kerstin Ekman’s reputation in her native Sweden in the 1970s, long before she achieved world-wide success with novels like Blackwater and The Forest of Hours. It follows the fortunes of the inhabitants of a provincial Swedish town, familiar from the first two books in the series, from the late 1920s to the Second World War, when events beyond the boundaries of neutral Sweden disrupt the regular rhythms of life.
Winner of the George Bernard Shaw Prize 2002.
First published by Norvik Press in 2002, this new edition of the quartet, known as ‘Women and the City’ is designed to reach a new audience. Read more about The Angel House and the series as a whole in the mini-essays on the Norvik Press news blog.