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

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.

A collection of winter stories by Selma Lagerlöf, now available in English for the first time and revealing the breadth of this exceptional storyteller’s skills. In a format beloved of nineteenth-century European readers, this is a selection of stories designed to be read aloud in the family circle in the festive season, like those that Charles Dickens contributed to Yuletide almanacs and annuals in his own country. In this Penguin Classics volume, Lagerlöf weaves together magic and miracles, Swedish folklore and timeless fables, darkness and light, heartfelt joy and festive wonder, adds a dash of ghost tale and tops it all with a glittering title story that will appeal to anyone who has ever loved reading and longed for a new book under the Christmas tree. A collaborative project by a team of seasoned Lagerlöf translators, Linda Schenck, Peter Graves and Sarah Death.

“Among women novelists of great talent or genius, none, in my opinion, is to be placed higher than Selma Lagerlöf” (Marguerite Yourcenar)

Children’s stories for grown-ups too! Are you ready for adventures? Don’t you often find that on your way, something unexpected happens? This story collection chronicles the escapades of young people in Finland in days gone by. Follow them as they engage with nature and meet strange creatures. They discover the power of magic and dreams and get back home safely, maybe a little wiser.

Claire Lidman died fourteen years ago. So why does she appear in the background of a recent holiday snap taken in Venice?

Her husband brings the anomaly to Hans Rekke and Micaela Vargas. Initial scepticism gives way to cautious belief, but Rekke is falling apart again and Vargas has her own problems. Her gangster brother is threatening to silence her if she doesn’t get off his case.

Meanwhile, Rekke’s daughter Julia has a new boyfriend she’s determined to keep secret. He sees something in her she can’t see herself, but there are hints of a darker side.

Most troubling of all, Rekke is hearing whispers of a name he hasn’t heard for years. A rival from his youth whose restless evil links all the threads in this incipient case. The pieces are laid and he’s already one move ahead. The name of the game is revenge.