Fredrik Backman on the Art of Scandinavian Storytelling

Swedish, the autochthonal connection of the novelist Fredrik Backman, is spoken by lone astir 10 cardinal people, truthful the writer feels fortunate that each his books—including the best-sellers “A Man Called Ove,” “Anxious People,” and the “Beartown” trilogy—have been translated into English. Backman relishes the accidental to service arsenic an ambassador for modern Swedish literature, and for the country’s broader literate tradition. From Nordic fairy tales and Viking people stories to Astrid Lindgren’s “Pippi Longstocking” and Scandi-noir, “everything is character-driven,” helium said. “They’re each astir people’s relationships and emotions and growth.” Backman, whose latest book, “My Friends,” comes retired successful May, joined america precocious to sermon 4 different Swedish novels that volition look successful English this year, works that, similar his own, are profoundly rooted successful Scandinavia’s storytelling tradition. His comments person been edited and condensed.

The Colony

by Annika Norlin

At its core, this publication is simply a survey of radical dynamics. The main character, Emelie, is burned retired from beingness successful the large city, truthful she moves to the forests of bluish Sweden. There she finds a tiny radical of radical surviving together, led by a charismatic pistillate named Sara. But Emelie’s accomplishment disrupts everyone’s role, and from this hostility emerges an bonzer communicative astir trying to find your spot successful modern society.

Norlin’s characters are each truthful real; she knows each feeling of each person, which is incredibly hard to bash and requires a batch of investment. She besides has a wonderfully unpredictable mode of writing. It’s some journalistic and poetic, and she moves backmost and distant betwixt the registers successful a mode that fewer writers can. She leans toward the reportorial, but determination are beauteous sentences hidden throughout, and erstwhile you find 1 it conscionable knocks you over.

When the Cranes Fly South

by Lisa Ridzén

It’s a pugnacious happening to age, to person your assemblage springiness up connected you, and this profoundly moving communicative contends with that, and with grief and death. It follows an aged man, Bo, who lives unsocial with his canine aft his wife, who has Alzheimer’s, is moved to an assisted-living facility. As Bo begins to contemplate what his beingness has amounted to, helium attempts to reconcile with his big son, with whom helium has had a fraught relationship.

The publication is simply a truly tender depiction of a father-son narration and a brutally honorable exploration of what it looks similar to attraction for idiosyncratic who is aged and dying. It’s heartfelt and comic without being implicit the top, and determination are nary caricatures. It’s 1 of those “you’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll privation to bargain 20 copies and springiness them to everyone you love” books.

The Sisters

by Jonas Hassen Khemiri

In Scandinavia, Khemiri is easy 1 of the astir respected and decorated authors of my generation. This book, his seventh, is simply a classical communicative astir sibling rivalry, and it follows 3 chaotic and loving sisters implicit a play of 30 years. They person a Tunisian parent and a Swedish father, and the communicative opens with them surviving successful Stockholm arsenic young adults. One becomes an actress, 1 flees to Tunisia and falls successful emotion with a woman, and 1 moves to New York, wherever she abruptly disappears.

Khemiri, who is besides of Swedish and Tunisian descent, lives and teaches successful New York; he’s a existent national of the world, and helium captures that acquisition successful an exceptionally vivid way. This is 1 of the champion novels I’ve ever work astir the complexities of mixed heritage. At astir 7 100 pages, the publication is rather long, but Khemiri’s connection is propulsive—it possesses a travel and a tempo that makes you hide that you’re reading.

Hope and Destiny

by Niklas Natt och Dag

This expansive portion of humanities fiction, acceptable successful the thirteenth century, has everything you could privation for successful a story: kings and rebels, betrayals and murder, a heartbreaking romance that seems destined for destruction. The publication is broadly astir however Sweden became Sweden, done the powerfulness struggles of aboriginal Scandinavia and however they shaped our full civilization and mode of living. But, astatine its heart, it’s a magnificent portrayal of people: rulers trying to clasp a kingdom together, insurgents warring to triumph it over, nobles attempting to negociate their children’s future, women rushing up to support their homes—all with precise wide motivations and intentions.

The publication is highly well-researched, but you ne'er consciousness arsenic though you’re drowning successful facts, and the communicative feels ace applicable to the satellite today, posing questions like: What is simply a country, and who controls it? How overmuch of a state tin beryllium governed by instrumentality and however overmuch indispensable beryllium governed by force? As compared with the U.S. and the U.K., Scandinavia hasn’t produced overmuch successful the mode of humanities fiction. Natt och Dag, by blending this genre with our joyous storytelling tradition, has helped unfastened caller doors, and I expect that a batch much Scandinavian humanities fabrication volition look successful the adjacent mates of years.