Sunday 26 April 2009

Swedish Book Review 2009:1

The first issue of the Swedish Book Review for 2009 contains a variety of articles and came out just in time for the London Book Fair.

The first extract follows comments about translating Jonas Hassen Khemiri into English by translator Rachel Willson-Broyles. Some of the difficulties encountered involve his idiosyncratic use of compounds, some of which are neologisms.

David Lagercrantz has written a novel Syndafall i Wilmslow / Fall from Grace in Wilmslow about the Enigma code-breaking machine. Extract introduced and translated by Marlaine Delargy.

Tyst hav / Silent Seas is a book about overfishing, written by Swedish Green Party activist Isabella Lövin. Extract translated by Peter Linton.

Other extracts are from books by Fredrik Sjöberg, Maria Ernestam, Elin Wägner, plus an overview article, first published on the Eurozine, about recent Swedish books by DN editor Jonas Thente, intriguingly entitled Beyond Crime Fiction, Handbags and Designer Suits.

The Bookshelf section contains 15 short reviews of works by for instance Carina Burman, Theodor Kallifatides, Bo Carpelan, Per Wästberg and Robert Åsbacka.

2 comments:

David McDuff said...

My copy hasn't arrived yet. I thought I might read some of it on the Web, but it doesn't seem to be there yet, either.

Eric Dickens said...

No, I'm afraid that the webpage lags behind reality somewhat. Half the shelf-space of the open access Swedish stand was filled with copies of the magazine, so I imagine that the editor and publisher gave the LBF priority over regular subscribers. The three authors highlighted in my overview above are also mentioned on the cover.

One thing I omitted to mention in the posting above was Erik Titusson's article about the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award (ALMA) for children's literature. The ALMA also has a website: www.alma.se . The prize is for a children's writer's whole œuvre, rather than a single book, and amounts to five million Swedish kronor (i.e. about €500,000). The award for 2009 went to the Tamer Institute for Community Education in Ramallah. See:
http://www.tamerinst.org/