The young Swedish author Victoria Benedictsson published her first novel Pengar (Money) in 1885, under the pseudonym Ernst Ahlgren. The novel is set in rural southern Sweden where the author lived, and follows the fortunes of Selma Berg, a girl whose fate has much in common with that of Madame Bovary and Ibsen's Nora. The gifted young Selma is forced to give up her dreams of going to art school when her uncle persuades her to marry, at the age of sixteen, a rich older squire. Profoundly shocked by her wedding night and by the mercenary nature of the marriage transaction, she finds herself...
The young Swedish author Victoria Benedictsson published her first novel Pengar (Money) in 1885, under the pseudonym Ernst Ahlgren. The novel is set i...
An economical and haunting tale, published in book form in 1904 and set in the sixteenth century on the snowbound west coast of Sweden, Lord Arne's Silver is a classic from the pen of an 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 of the archipelago. Young Elsalill, sole survivor of the mass killing in the home of rich cleric Lord Arne, becomes a pawn in dangerous games both earthly and supernatural.
An economical and haunting tale, published in book form in 1904 and set in the sixteenth century on the snowbound west coast of Sweden, Lord Arne's Si...
The property of MArbacka in VArmland was where Selma LagerlOf grew up, immersed in a tradition of storytelling. Financial difficulties led to the loss of the house, but LagerlOf was later able to buy it back, rebuild and make it the centre of her world. The book MArbacka, the first part of a trilogy written in 1922-32, can be read as many different things: memoir, fictionalised autobiography, even part of LagerlOf's myth-making about her own successful career as an author. It is part social and family history, part mischievous satire in the guise of innocent, first-person child...
The property of MArbacka in VArmland was where Selma LagerlOf grew up, immersed in a tradition of storytelling. Financial difficulties led to the l...
The Angel House is the third in the remarkable series of free-standing novels that cemented Kerstin Ekman's reputation in her native Sweden during the 1970s, long before she achieved world-wide success with novels like Blackwater and The Forest of Hours. It follows the fortunes of the inhabitants of a provincial Swedish town familiar from the previous two books in the sequence, Witches' Rings and The Spring, from the late 1920s to the Second World War, when events beyond the boundaries of neutral Sweden threaten to disrupt the regular rhythms of life. With this sequence of novels focussing...
The Angel House is the third in the remarkable series of free-standing novels that cemented Kerstin Ekman's reputation in her native Sweden during the...
In this second part of her notionally autobiographical trilogy, Selma Lagerloef broadens the perspective from the farm where she grew up to include the people and places around Lake Fryken in her beloved Varmland county. The personal creation myth which she began in Marbacka continues here with a focus on the self-discipline and imagination needed to fulfil a childhood ambition to become an author. It is hard work that sometimes means taking a stand against convention but also a deeply enriching process in a home steeped in storytelling and books. The mature author reveals the roots of the...
In this second part of her notionally autobiographical trilogy, Selma Lagerloef broadens the perspective from the farm where she grew up to include th...
