Born severely disabled and without the ability to walk or talk, Desirée is an “April Wtich,” clairvoyant and omniscient and cable of following the world through the eyes of both other people and animals. Addressing the themes of mother-daughter relationships, competition between women and the shortcomings of the post-war Swedish welfare state, April witch is a thrilling, fascinating story.

The second volume of the Women and the City tetralogy, The Spring follows the women the reader encountered in Witches’ Rings, mainly through the years between the World Wars.

Kerstin Ekman, one of the foremost living Swedish authors, began what became a tetralogy commonly referred to as Women in the City, with this volume in 1997. it opens in the 1870s, and follows the women of a small community as it grows, thanks to the advent of the railroad, among other changes.

Fredrika Bremer was a nineteenth-century writing sensation, her bestselling novels and travel books instantly translated into a range of other European languages. This early work shows she was never afraid to abandon the prevailing conventions of insipid romantic fiction to explore the social and moral problems facing women. This novel also has one of the most interesting narrators one could wish to meet: the plain-speaking but perceptive housekeeper Beata Hvardagslag, called back to the family to cook up a solution to their problems, Metaphors of kitchen and household abound in her astonishingly modern, metacritical approach to storytelling.