Tove Jansson – The Moomins and the Great Flood

Created in 1945, yet published in the U.K. for the very first time, The Moomins and the Great Flood offers an extraordinary glimpse into the creativity and imagination that launched the Moomin books.

Moominmamma and young Moomintroll search for the long lost Moominpappa through forest and flood, meeting a little creature (an early Sniff) and the elegantly strange Tulippa along the way. Tove Jansson illustrates her first ever Moomin adventure with stunning sepia watercolour and delightful pen and ink drawings. A revelation for Moomin fans.

Murder on the Thirty-First Floor

Thriller by the author of the Martin Beck series.

In an unnamed country, in an unnamed year sometime in the future, Chief Inspector Jensen of the Sixteenth Division is called in after the publishers controlling the entire country’s newspapers and magazines receive a threat to blow up their building, in retaliation for a murder they are accused of committing. The building is evacuated, but the bomb fails to explode and Jensen is given seven days in which to track down the letter writer. Jensen has never had a case he could not solve before, but as his investigation into the identity of the letter writer begins it soon becomes clear that the directors of the publishers have their own secrets, not least the identity of the ‘Special Department’ on the thirty first floor; the only department not permitted to be evacuated after the bomb threat.

ISBN 9780099554769.

Money

This searingly honest novel follows the fortunes of young Selma Berg, whose fate has much in common with Madame Bovary and Ibsen’s Nora.

Written under the male pseudonym of Ernst Ahlgren in 1885, this memorable work of early feminist fiction is set in  rural southern Sweden. The gifted young Selma is forced to give up her dreams of attending art school when her uncle forces her into marriage with a wealthy local squire, a much older man. Profoundly shocked by her wedding night and by the mercenary nature of the marriage transaction, she finds herself trapped in a life of idle luxury. She finds solace with her medical-student cousin and old sparring partner Richard, but when their mutual regard threatens to blossom into passion, Selma is forced to take radical action.

The Lily Pond

Having lived for a year on a rugged, rural island in a deeply religious Christian community, Stephie finds the idea of attending secondary school in the big city both liberating and intimidating. And the World War continues, seemingly endlessly.

The second volume and Batchelder honor recipient of Annika Thor’s Faraway island series. Too old for the island elementary school. Stephie is allowed by her foster family to continue her education in Gothenburg. Another transition awaits, as well as first love and the endless fear of the war and the fate of the girls’ parents. Nellie is now alone on the island, and becoming more and more adapted to her new life in Sweden, at the expense of her memories of home and family.

Exposed

The Bomber

The Luminous Darkness – The Theatre of Jon Fosse by Leif Zern, translated by Ann Henning Jocelyn

Jon Fosse’s plays have been produced in countless venues all over the world.

They have been translated into dozens of languages, winning awards, inspiring critical adulation, and intriguing and inspiring theatre goers all over the world. In this book, translated by Ann Henning Jocelyn, herself a bi-lingual playwright, Leif Zern,  long-term the drama critic of the Dagens Nyheter, gives an in-depth analysis of Fosse’s work.

Lord Arne’s Silver

A haunting, sparingly-written tale set in the sixteenth century on the snowbound West Coast of Sweden, this is a classic from the pen of a Nobel-prizewinning author consummately skilled in the deployment of narrative power and ambivalence.

A story of robbery and murder, retribution, love and betrayal plays out against the backdrop of the stalwart fishing community in the West Coast archipelago. Young Elsalill, sole survivor of the mass killing in the home of rich Lord Arne, becomes a pawn in dangerous games both earthly and supernatural. As the deep-frozen sea stops the murderers escaping, the price that must be paid is sacrifice and atonement.

The Emperor of Lies

Steve Sem-Sandberg guides the reader to the human heart of these appalling events. … I find it difficult to think of any book that has had such an immediate and powerful impact on me.’ Hilary Mantel

The Jews of the Nazi-administered Polish ghetto of Lodz in the Second World War were led by a strangely two-faced authority figure who realised his own survival depended on making the ghetto indispensable by turning it into an efficient industrial machine. But what of the starving cogs in his machine, the individuals desperate to believe that the trains onto which they are herded will take them to other work camps and better futures? Termed ‘one of the great Holocaust novels of the twentieth century’, this book won the prestigious August prize and has been published in over twenty languages.