The Bird Within Me
Translator: B.J. Woodstein
Author: Sara Lundberg
Publisher: Book Island and Groundwood
Year of Publication: 2020
This is a fictionalised story based on the artist Berta Hansson.
Translator: B.J. Woodstein
Author: Sara Lundberg
Publisher: Book Island and Groundwood
Year of Publication: 2020
This is a fictionalised story based on the artist Berta Hansson.
Translator: Saskia Vogel
Author: Greta Thunberg, Malena Ernman, et al.
Publisher: Allen Lane
Year of Publication: 2020
Co-translated with Paul Norlen.
The profoundly moving story of how love, courage, and determination brought Greta Thunberg’s family back from the brink.
Translator: Fiona Graham
Author: Johanna Gillbro
Publisher: Scribe Publications
Year of Publication: 2020
Holistic skincare from the epidermis to the microbiome, by an expert in dermatology.
An award-winning skin scientist explains how to maximise skin health and make the best of your looks without spending a fortune on skincare products.
Translator: Annie Prime
Author: Tove Jansson, Alex Haridi, Cecilia Davidsson
Publisher: Pan Macmillan
Year of Publication: 2020
Retelling of a Tove Jansson classic children’s tale. Part of the Back to Jansson series.
Combining the spirit of Jansson’s original warm and witty text with stunning illustrations of all her most beloved characters, Moomintroll Sets Sail is a heartwarming story of kindness, adventure and courage, as the Moomins come to realise that although adventure is exciting, home is always best.
Translator: Saskia Vogel
Author: Jessica Schiefauer
Publisher: Deep Vellum
Year of Publication: 2020
Finalist for the PEN Translation Award.
Winner of Sweden’s most prestigious literary prize for young readers, Girls Lost is a thriller featuring three teenage girls: Kim, Bella, and Momo. The three occupy a challenging limbo between childhood and adulthood, made only more difficult by the steady provocation of their malicious male classmates and pubescent bodies that are changing beyond their control. They are on the precipice of a grown-up world that seems to be broken into two groups: male and female; public and private; assailant and target. Eager to escape, the girls seek refuge in Bella’s greenhouse, a free zone where their imaginations run wild and their talents can flourish.
Translator: Saskia Vogel
Author: Håkan Nesser
Publisher: World Editions
Year of Publication: 2020
Sweden in the ’60s. Erik and his friend Edmund spend their vacation by a forest lake daydreaming about Ewa, a young substitute teacher with an uncanny resemblance to the actress Kim Novak. The boys are having the time of their lives until a shocking discovery disrupts their world. Twenty-five years later, Erik comes across a newspaper article about unsolved crimes …
Sweden in the ’60s. Erik and his friend Edmund spend their vacation by a forest lake daydreaming about Ewa, a young substitute teacher with an uncanny resemblance to the actress Kim Novak. The boys are having the time of their lives until a shocking discovery disrupts their world. Twenty-five years later, Erik comes across a newspaper article about unsolved crimes and is overwhelmed by memories and questions from that summer of his youth. What actually happened back then? The Summer of Kim Novak has all the tension and mystery of Nesser’s world-famous thrillers, combined with a coming-of-age tale of remarkable psychological precision.
Translator: Nichola Smalley
Author: Andrzej Tichý
Publisher: And Other Stories
Year of Publication: 2020
A deeply musical novel about poverty and being ‘the one who got away’
Shortlisted for the 2016 August Prize
Longlisted for the 2021 International Booker Prize
Winner of the 2021 Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize
Malmö, Sweden. A cellist meets a spun-out junkie. That could have been me. His mind starts to glitch between his memories and the avant-garde music he loves, and he descends into his past, hearing all over again the chaotic song of his youth. He emerges to a different sound, heading for a crash.
From sprawling housing projects to underground clubs and squat parties, Wretchedness is a blistering trip through the underbelly of Europe’s cities. Powered by a furious, unpredictable beat, this is a paean to brotherhood, to those who didn’t make it however hard they fought, and a visceral indictment of the poverty which took them.
Translator: Saskia Vogel
Author: Lina Wolff
Publisher: And Other Stories
Year of Publication: 2020
In this collection from the winner of Sweden’s August Prize, Lina Wolff gleefully wrenches unpredictability from the suffocations of day-to-day life, shatters balances of power without warning, and strips her characters down to their strangest and most unstable selves.
An underemployed chef is pulled into the escalating violence of his neighbour’s makeshift porn channel. An elderly piano student is forced to flee her home village when word gets out that she’s had sex with her thirty-something teacher. A hose pumping cava through the maquette of a giant penis becomes a murder weapon in the hands of a disaffected housewife. Wicked, discomfiting, delightful and wry, delivered with the deadly wit for which Wolff is known, Many People Die Like You presents the uneasy spectacle of people in solitude, and probes, with savage honesty, the choices we make when we believe no one is watching … or when we no longer care.
Translator: Neil Smith
Author: Lars Kepler
Publisher: HarperCollins
Year of Publication: 2020
Translator: Neil Smith
Author: Fredrik Backman
Publisher: Michael Joseph
Year of Publication: 2020
One bank robber, seven strangers and a really bad idea…
“A wildly unpredictable caper which begins with a failed bank robbery leading to a hostage situation unlike any other.” Shortlisted for the CWA Crime Fiction in Translation Dagger 2021.
Translator: Neil Smith
Author: Camilla Läckberg
Publisher: HarperCollins
Year of Publication: 2020
People would kill to have Faye Adelheim’s life. She lives in an ultra-swanky apartment in the most exclusive area of Stockholm, she has a gorgeous husband who gives her everything she’s ever wanted, and she has an adorable daughter who lights up her world. Faye’s life is perfect. So how is it, then, that she now finds herself in a …
People would kill to have Faye Adelheim’s life. She lives in an ultra-swanky apartment in the most exclusive area of Stockholm, she has a gorgeous husband who gives her everything she’s ever wanted, and she has an adorable daughter who lights up her world. Faye’s life is perfect.
So how is it, then, that she now finds herself in a police station?
The truth is that Faye’s life is far from what it seems. The truth is that Faye isn’t even her real name. And now she’s been caught out. There’s no way she’s going to go down without a fight. The only question is – who will escape with their life?
Translator: Ian Giles
Author: Martin Nordin
Publisher: Hardie Grant
Year of Publication: 2020
Vegetarian barbecue, smoking and grilling recipes from the writer who brought us ‘Green Burgers’
This is more than just a barbecue cookbook. Fire, Smoke, Green is broken up into seven chapters that cover everything you need to know about making great food over the flame: from grilling directly onto fire, to cooking with indirect fire, smoked recipes and even wood-fired pizza.
Translator: Kathy Saranpa
Author: Ingrid & Joachim Wall
Publisher: Amazon Crossing
Year of Publication: 2020
The media treated her as a victim, but she was far more than that. She was a voice for the voiceless.
Translator: Saskia Vogel
Author: Elisabeth Åsbrink
Publisher: Other Press
Year of Publication: 2020
Winner of the August Prize.
The story of the complicated long-distance relationship between a Jewish child and his forlorn Viennese parents after he was sent to Sweden in 1939, and the unexpected friendship the boy developed with the future founder of IKEA, a Nazi activist.
Translator: Sarah Death
Author: Hagar Olsson
Publisher: Norvik Press
Year of Publication: 2020
‘For us – children of a confined era, growing up in stuffy rooms crammed with dusty draperies, little china dogs, plaster ornaments and the first monstrous, wind-up gramophones – there was a strong and vivid impression that the new freedom would drag us all out into the streets, old and young, helter-skelter into the raucous crowds.’
Vega Maria has been trapped since birth in a vice of conflicting parental expectations. Her father brings her up to admire history’s heroic male adventurers, while her mother channels her towards housework and conformity. In a time of revolution and civil war in early twentieth-century Finland, Vega finds it hard to identify her own calling, alighting first on the cause of feminism but feeling her way towards a wider humanitarian mission. A kaleidoscope of changing roles for Vega whirls us through this compelling modernist novel, multi-layered, accessible and funny. Hagar Olsson’s evocation of Helsinki is second to none:
Translator: David McDuff
Author: Karin Boye
Publisher: Penguin
Year of Publication: 2019
Written midway between Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four, as the terrible events of the Second World War were unfolding, Kallocain depicts a totalitarian ‘World State’ which seeks to crush the individual entirely.
In this desolate, paranoid landscape of ‘police eyes’ and ‘police ears’, the obedient citizen and middle-ranking scientist Leo Kall discovers a drug that will force anyone who takes it to tell the truth. But can private thought really be obliterated? Karin Boye’s chilling novel of creeping alienation shows the dangers of acquiescence and the power of resistance, no matter how futile.
Translator: Annie Prime
Author: Maria Turtschaninoff
Publisher: Pushkin Press
Year of Publication: 2019
Winner of the GLLI Best Translated Young Adult Book Prize 2020.
Maresi Red Mantle is the third and final book in the Red Abbey Chronicles. It follows Maresi as she leaves the sanctuary and safety of the Red Abbey and returns to her childhood home of Rovas.
It is at once a heart-wrenching coming-of-age story, a nail-biting fantasy adventure, and an unapologetically feminist treatise that has won the hearts of younger and older readers alike.
Translator: Kira Josefsson
Author: Andreas Ekström
Publisher: Weyler
Year of Publication: 2019
An essay book about finding your way forward, and the benefits of getting lost.
This book is about finding things. Really it is more of a beginning, a collection of questions for anyone seeking to move ahead with new approaches, problems, and solutions. It’s about the challenge Google promised to help us with, this basic human problem we were told would be solved once and for all. Three chapters of this book are essentially about the internet, and three are essentially about other things. The book does not provide any definitive answers. It tries to find a way forward, but it is far more interested in getting lost. Featuring: A lieutenant commander, a mapmaker, a musician, and Konstantina, the doctor who got suspicious— and found a ruthless sloth inside the author’s body.
Translator: Annie Prime
Author: Johan Egerkrans
Publisher: B. Wahlstrom
Year of Publication: 2019
An illustrated guide to mythical monsters and legends of the undead from around the world.
Horror, fantasy, paranormal folklore and history come together in this fascinating exploration of legends of the undead from around the globe, illustrated with ghoulishly brilliant images.
Translator: Alice Menzies
Author: Fredrik Backman
Publisher: Penguin
Year of Publication: 2019
“a tender and funny series of letters from a new father to his son about one of life’s most daunting experiences: parenthood.”
Translator: Jane Davis
Author: Gunnel Ryner
Publisher: Lyfta Publishing
Year of Publication: 2019
Are you tired of fighting an uphill battle and constantly having to rely on your own willpower, motivation and self-discipline? Would you like to learn a smarter, simpler way to get the life you’ve always dreamed of – both at home and at work?
Gunnel Ryner overturns the traditional view of self-development and success, in which it’s all about you, and instead shows how you can create an environment – with the right people, things, places, conditions and ideas – that simply draws you in the direction you want to go.
With a light-hearted blend of science, humour and relevant examples, she demonstrates the positive aspects of laziness and shows how the right environment is more important than willpower. The book also provides you with a step-by-step method that makes it easy and fun to get where you want, both in your own life and together with your colleagues at work.
Gunnel Ryner has a degree in behavioural science and is a speaker, organisational consultant and coach. With her talks, workshops and coaching programmes, she has inspired thousands of people to take themselves and their workplaces to completely new heights. The Lazy Way to a Wonderful Life is her second book.
Translator: Deborah Bragan-Turner
Author: Håkan Nesser; translated by Paul Norlen and Deborah Bragan-Turner
Publisher: Pan Macmillan
Year of Publication: 2019
The first collection of Håkan Nesser’s novellas and short stories to be published in the UK. A perfect introduction to the godfather of Swedish crime.
Intrigo contains five stories set in the fictional city of Maardam. Secrets are revealed, lies exposed, and the past returns to haunt the people who thought they had escaped it.