He Swindled Everyone and Everything

Transcription

NORSTEDTs
ageNcy 2012
Literary fiction
”The urgency found in this book,
really isn’t granted all novels, I so
much look forward to the continuation.” Upsala Nya Tidning
JONAS gARDELL
Jonas Gardell was born in 1963 and made his highly praised literary debut in 1985. He is one of Scandinavia’s most
popular stand-up comedians and a highly appreciated playwright. Jonas Gardell has an unerring talent to puncture
our everyday life and the emotions beneath. In his books he
portrays all kinds of human beings, the humour is natural
and obvious as is also pain and sorrow. In Jonas Gardell’s
writings there are no taboos, he moves with preciseness between the big and the small, between dreams and stern reality.
He has written 16 books and has been translated into 13
languages.
Novels
Passionsspelet (1985) • Odjurets tid (1986) • Präriehundarna (1987)
• Vill gå hem (1988) • Fru Björks öden och äventyr (1990) • En
komikers uppväxt (1992) • Frestelsernas berg (1995) • Så går en dag
ifrån vårt liv och kommer aldrig åter (1998) • Ett ufo gör entré (2001)
• Jenny (2006)
Other titles by Jonas Gardell
Mormor gråter (1993) • Isbjörnarna. Cheek to cheek. Människor i
solen (1997) • Oskuld (2000) • Om Gud (2003) • Om Jesus (2009)
• Har man inget liv får man köpa ett som alla andra: samlade visdomsord 2010-2011 (2011)
linda.altrovberg@norstedts.se
catherine.mork@norstedts.se
asa.bergman@norstedts.se
Literary fiction
jonas
gardell
Torka aldrig tårar utan handskar
Never Wipe Tears Without Gloves
torka aldrig tårar
utan handskar
In 1982 the first reports on a new mysterious disease
reached Sweden; a cancer-like illness with rapid course
and imminent death striking only homosexual males.
torka aldrig
tårar utan
handskar
2. Sjukdomen
2. sjukdomen
One of Sweden’s best-loved authors has written a piece
of contemporary history, a magnum opus which readers
have been waiting for. Norstedts published the first part
of Gardell’s great work about AIDS, Kärleken, in August
2012 and in five weeks it sold more than 60.000 copies.
jonas
gardell
norstedts
jonas
gardell
1. Kärleken/1. Love
August 2012, 288 pages
Lead title in the two major book clubs
Sample translation in English available
torka aldrig tårar
utan handskar
2. Sjukdomen/2. Disease
January 2013, 240 pages
3. Döden/3. Death
July 2013, 240 pages
jonas
gardell
torka aldrig tårar
utan handskar
3. Döden
3. döden
Senior Editor: Eva Gedin
Rights sold to: Piratforlaget, Norway • Johnny Kniga, WSOY, Finland • De Geus, Holland
Option publisher: Tiderne Skifter, Denmark
norstedts
A Beautiful Love Story in the Shadow of AIDS
When Rasmus steps off the train at Stockholm’s Central
Station in September 1982 he is leaving the small industrial
community of Koppom behind, never to return. Young and
beautiful he throws himself into Stockholm’s gay community, unable to say no to anyone.
Torka aldrig tårar utan handskar is a compelling, passionate
and desperate portrayal of 1980s Stockholm, of people who
had started to grasp their freedom for the first time in history, and about an illness that broke out and threatened to
kill them all.
Benjamin is a Jehova’s Witness, enthusiastically going from
door to door preaching about God. Nothing can shake his
faith until the day he knocks on the door belonging to Paul,
the warmest, funniest and bitchiest homosexual God ever
created. Then, on the evening of Christmas Eve, with snow
falling over the city, Rasmus and Benjamin meet, and nothing is the same again.
Press voices:
”As a dirge, as a reminder, as criticism, as rehabilitation, as a declaration of love, and not least as highly anxious historiography,
it is everything I could wish for. And even though I know it will
get worse before it gets better, I am waiting for the continuation.”
Svenska Dagbladet
This is a story of a time and a place. It happened here, in the
city of Stockholm, on these streets, among the people who
live out their lives here. In this city’s parks, its pavement cafés, bars, sauna clubs, porn cinemas, hospitals, churches and
graveyards. In a city where most of the inhabitants carried
on with their lives as if nothing was happening, young men
fell ill, grew thinner, wasted away and died. It was like a war
being fought in peace time. The very people who loved the
most, who were possessed by love - they were the ones taken by the frost.
”Sometimes it happens that as a critic you must stop, put your
guard down and just rest in the experience of witnessing something magnificent. /.../ My feeling, already, is that Gardell writes modern Swedish literary history” Dagens Nyheter
”one hopes that Torka aldrig tårar utan handskar will be
introduced as compulsory reading in all Swedish secondary
schools.” Kristianstadsbladet
“Jonas Gardell wants to force us to remember and thus save his
dead friends from yet another death, the death of silence and
oblivion. He is well prepared for the job. The reported research
is impressive. Gardell is, you realize, deeply concerned with us
really understanding what happened and why it happened.”
Sydsvenskan
Literary fiction
Johannes Anyuru
Johannes Anyuru, born in 1979, made his debut in 2003
with the critically acclaimed collection of poems Det
är bara gudarna som är nya/Only The Gods Are New.
His latest poetry collection, Städerna inuti Hall /The
Cities Inside Hall was nominated for the August Prize
in 2009. The year after he made his novel debut with
the highly praised Skulle jag dö under andra himlar/If I
Were to Die Under Other Skies.
En storm kom från paradiset
A Storm Blew in From Paradise
September 2012, 284 pages
Senior Editor: Håkan Bravinger
Sample translation in English available in October
Haunting Account of an Unfulfilled Life
“A storm blew in from paradise. That storm was life.”
A young man, P, is sitting in a small cage in a Tanzanian jail.
His greatest dream is to fly. Up until quite recently everything had been looking promising. He had come to Greece
to be trained at the Hellenic Air Force Academy in Dekelia,
just outside Athens, chosen to be a pilot and an officer in
the Ugandan Air Force. Soon he would be soaring through
the skies in an unpainted, polished aluminium MIG-21.
But then, on 26 January 1971, the news of a coup in his homeland reached him. Idi Amin had taken power. Shortly
thereafter all Ugandan aviation cadets are ordered home by
Amin’s state machine. It is in that moment that P makes
his life’s most crucial choice: to defect and stay in Greece.
After that, nothing turns out like he imagined. He’s not allowed to fly in Europe, and in despair he accepts a job in
Zambia as a crop dusting pilot. But as he lands he is taken
into custody and transported to a Tanzanian jail.
P is afraid; afraid that he will be sent back to Uganda and be
prosecuted for treason; afraid that he will die here without
anybody knowing; afraid that they have already killed his
family back home.
Over a period of many years, we follow P’s struggles - as a
refugee, as a military camp prisoner, as a man on the run.
He never stops dreaming of a life as a pilot, but he’ll never
get to fly again. Johannes Anyuru has written an exciting
novel about his own father’s fate, a read which stays with
you for a long time. This is a novel about survival, and one
man’s unfulfilled dream to fly.
Press voices for Johannes Anyuru’s previous work:
[Anyuru] takes this lofty tone from the Koran, the Iliad or the
Aeneid and broadens the tonal register in contemporary literary
language. /.../ It is hard to resist somebody who makes everyday
life so magnificent.” Dagens Nyheter
“He makes me fall to the ground and observe the heaven. And if,
as the author says, there will be another two novels ‘about heavens’ than I will be happy again to lie down and look up as the
clouds pass by in all their banality and delightful perfection.”
Sydsvenskan
“a novel written in an absolutely luminous language. You can
hardly miss the fact that it is a poet who has penned this. A poet
with a superb balance between the everyday prosaic scenes and
dazzlingly lyrical elements, between slang and beauty. It is, quite
simply, so beautiful that sometimes it just takes my breath away.”
Helsingborgs Dagblad
Literary fiction
Karolina Ramqvist
Karolina Ramqvist, born in 1976, is a journalist and author. For a long
time she has been a powerful voice in social debate. She has written for
Swedish national daily Dagens Nyheter and the magazine Bang. She
has also been editor in chief of Arena magazine. Her latest book Flickvännen/The Girlfriend, 2009, was nominated for Sveriges Radio’s Novel
Prize and awarded Vi Magazine’s literature prize. It has been translated
into several languages.
Alltings början
The Beginning of Everything
June 2012, 389 pages
Option publishers:
Tiderne Skifter, Denmark
Gyldendal, Norway
Daughter of a Modern Generation
Saga remembers only too well the moment of her arrival. It would be strange if she didn’t; every birthday her mother shows her the film of her birth, the
moment when the tiny child who would become
Saga was pushed into the world.
Saga has longed for everything adult life has to offer. Her
mother is an artist and a radical feminist and as the daughter of such a woman she is expected to be independent and
take advantage of everything life has to offer.
This is Stockholm in the 1990s and Saga starts a new school
and quickly makes friends. They spend their days drinking
coffee and smoking cigarettes and they go to clubs whenever they can get in. But Saga is plagued by a nagging sense
of futility and the feeling that she ought to be doing something, like her mother’s generation with their feminist
movement, demonstrating for free abortion and nursery
care. They had a goal and a purpose; Saga feels her generation is lacking exactly that.
Saga and her friend Pauline spend a lot of time getting to
know the right people; they sleep around, they party, they
are free. For some time Saga has had Vikor Schantz in her
sights. He is older, knows everyone and more to the point
everyone wants to know him. They begin a relationship. Or
rather, he allows her to have sex with him. He commands,
she obeys. Their relationship is secret, destructive and degrading. There are other men in her life but the only one
she really wants to be with is Viktor.
Karolina Ramqvist’s new novel Alltings början is the story of
a young woman’s passage through the stages of her youth,
as she takes her first steps away from childhood and hurtles
into an independent adult life. Written with boldness and
clarity this is about a generation trapped between spoken
and unspoken demands, and marked by a feeling of abandonment.
Press voices:
“I close Karolina Ramqvist’s Alltings början and think: Hallelujah, my generation novel has come.” Sydsvenskan
”Karolina Ramqvist writes Saga’s teenage know-it-all uncertainty in a genius way. She is simply hilarious and text flows easily.
The narrator Saga is obvious; she drinks and reads and fucks and
blushes, and gets a headache from tightening her face to look
more attractive. She is also congenial with the time, the 90’s that
was so promising and fin-de-siecle-decadent at the same time.”
Swedish Radio’s Kulturnytt
Literary fiction
mariette Glodeck
Mariette Glodeck (born 1967) lives in Stockholm and works as
a copywriter. In 2005 she made her debut with the novel Röda
vita rosen/Red White Rose. Her latest book was En station från
paradiset/One Station Away From Paradise.
Den sista dagen i december
The Last Day of December
October 2012, 230 pages
The Hen Night From Hell
A bride-to-be, a father-by-mistake, a snob from the
suburbs, a film director, a drunkard, a lesbian wannabe, a reluctant pop-princess and a poo prince.
and the gang meet up on a cruise for a joint hen/stag party.
For Milla the party turns into her worst nightmare, she’s
convinced her future sister-in-law is trying to demean her,
and the others don’t seem to notice a thing.
This is how one could describe Milla, Måns, Carl, Jens, Pepsi, Tove, Frida and Teddy. Eight long-time friends in their
thirties, who don’t see each other as often as they perhaps
would have liked to anymore.
Den sista dagen i december is a novel about relationships,
friendships and other disasters. It’s a warm and entertaining novel about a group of people who are at a stage in life
where the choices you make and the friends you have are
more important than ever before.
Frida has spent the last year in the tour bus, hiding her
real feelings behind her on-stage persona, just as she hides
cheap romance novels behind the cover of The Hitchhiker’s
Guide to the Galaxy.
Måns is cultivating his bachelor lifestyle, still working late
nights behind a bar counter, until suddenly a girl he barely
knows tells him she’s pregnant.
Teddy has taken over his father’s firm, emptying portaloos
from sports events and festivals, and Tove is struggling with
her medical studies, as well as with her sexuality.
Press voices for Mariette Glodeck’s previous work:
“It is not easy to portray a number of misfits without resorting to a romanticising or a condemnatory attitude.
What Mariane Glodeck does in En station från paradiset
is not something you learn at writers’ workshops. /…/ the
best reading experience – and in fact it is a really, really
good one – comes when you put all doubts aside and follow
along with Glodeck wherever she wants to take you, even
if it happens to be down a rabbit hole.” Svenska Dagbladet
But when they do see each other it usually feels like nothing
has changed. To everyone’s surprise Milla is getting married
Literary fiction
JOnas Hassen Khemiri
Jonas Hassen Khemiri, born 1978, made a celebrated debut in
2003 with Ett öga rött/One Eye Red, which sold over 200.000 copies in Sweden and became the most best-selling paperback in
2004. His second novel, Montecore, was published to unanimous
raving reviews in 2006. Since then Khemiri has also established
himself internationally as a playwright.
Jag ringer mina bröder
I’m Calling My Brothers
Senior Editor: Stephen Farran-Lee, Albert Bonniers Förlag
English translation available
Previous works sold to:
Gyldendal, Norway
Gyldendal, Denmark
Johnny Kniga, Finland
De Geus, Holland
Piper Verlag, Germany
Le Serpent à Plumes, France
Roca, Spain
Ugo Guanda, Italy
Odiseja, Serbia
Gondolat, Hungary
Knopf, USA
Inostrannaya, Russia
Hayakawa Shobo, Japan
Minumsa, South Korea
Litopys, Ukraine
Paranoia in the Aftermath of a Terror Attack
A car has exploded in Stockholm. The novel’s I,
Amor, wanders around in a city that has been paralyzed by paranoia.
Amor is on his way to make a complaint about a damaged
drill head. And he will reply when Shavi calls. He will stop
stalking his friend Valeria, and he will comfort his grandmother who died long ago.
Most importantly: he cannot attract any suspicious glances. But he is plagued by paranoia and delusions and thinks
that others may see him as a potential perpetrator. For 24
intense hours we are in Amor’s head where the boundaries
between criminal and victim, love and chemistry, fantasy
and reality become increasingly blurred.
Jag ringer mina bröder is a both scary and humorous depiction of how paranoia destroys both the person seen and
the seer. This is Jonas Hassen Khemiri’s much longed-for
return to prose and it will also be staged in spring 2013.
Khemiri is one of Sweden’s most acclaimed and widely
read young authors and playwrights. He has been nominated for the August Award and received Borås Tidnings
Debut Award, Swedish Radio’s Novel Award, The Magazine VI’s Literature Prize and PO Enquist’s award. The
novels Ett öga rött and Montecore have been translated into
several languages and his debut play Invasion! became an
international success performed in France, Germany, United Kingdom, Norway and in the US, where it received an
Obie Award for best screenplay in 2011.
Press voices for Jonas Hassen Khemiri’s previous work:
”Ett öga rött is an important debut not just because it fills a void,
but because it challenges some of the expectations created by
the genre.” Expressen
”There isn’t a dull moment, it’s bursting with narrative joy.”
Aftonbladet
”Just how he gets a subject like integration to rock I don’t know,
but he does it.” Kulturnyheterna SVT
“Khemiri’s sombre humour is reminiscent of Zadie Smith and
Hari Kunzru. But he’s got a voice all his own. With one foot in
the immigrant community and his head in the clouds, he flaunts
his rare storytelling ability. A unique virtuoso.”
Östgöta Correspondenten
Literary fiction
Robert ÅSBACKA
Robert Åsbacka was born in 1961 in Terjärv, Finland,
but now lives in Sweden. He made his debut in 1988
with the poetry collection Med tungorna hängande but
his breakthrough came with Döbelns Gränd in 2000.
Åsbacka has been shortlisted and awarded numerous prestigious awards, among them the Runeberg
Prize (shortlisted 2005 and 2008), the Finlandia Prize
(shortlisted 2006) and the Nordic Council’s prize for
literature (shortlisted 2008). His latest novel, Orgelbyggaren, 2008, has been published in Sweden and translated into Finnish and German.
Orgelbyggaren
The Organ Builder
Senior Editor: Mari Koli, Schildts & Söderströms
Rights sold to: Hanser, Germany
Samlaren
The Collector
Senior Editor: Mari Koli,
Schildts & Söderströms
Schildts
&
Söderströms
An Unnerving Tale of Coincidence and Chance
“It was my first record ever. I was thinking that I just
have to have a record player. It was about time. If only
I had a record player I could sit by myself at home, in
bed and listen and bob my foot just like Bo and Viola
were doing now. If I had a record player and a room.”
It is winter 1969. Twelve year-old Tom lives with his mother
and older sister Karin in a small flat. He keeps his possessions and collections in boxes under the sofa in the living
room where he sleeps, looking forward to the day his sister
will finally move out. His best friend Mats moved a couple
of months earlier, without him there is not much to do in
this dull small town. Sometimes he goes out looking for
things for his collection, but when he does he has to be careful so that The Brothers don’t find him and beat him up.
Outside his window Tom can see his neighbour Bo’s big
fancy American cars parked in the backyard. Bo is also a
collector; he is handsome, quiet and secretive. Tom knows
that Bo writes strange letters to Karin, even though he has
a girlfriend, Viola. Tom loves watching Viola and tries to be
around her as much as he can.
Robert Åsbacka’s tone is unsentimental and precise, loaded
with meaning and feeling. Through Tom’s recollections
and the matter-of-fact police protocols, Samlaren tells the
unnerving story of a young boy and the traumatic chain of
events that came to affect his life.
Press voices for Robert Åsbacka’s previous work:
”The most vivid, intense and provoking novel I’ve read in a long
time. Read! ” Huvudstadsbladet
”Orgelbyggaren is really an impressive novel creation that captivates its reader from the first moment.” Vasabladet
”A hopeful expression of the possibilities in the art of making a
novel.” Svenska Dagbladet
Literary fiction
kristina sandberG
Kristina Sandberg (born 1971) was raised in Sundsvall, but is now living
in Stockholm. She made her debut in 1997 with the novel I vattnet flyter man/In The Water One Floats. This is her fifth novel, and the second
in a trilogy that began with the critically acclaimed Att föda ett barn/
Giving Birth (2010). Att föda ett barn has sold more than 10.000 copies
to date.
Sörja för de sina
Caring for One’s Own
Att föda ett barn
Giving Birth
Sample translation in English
available
Rights sold to:
Pantagruel, Norway
The Importance of Being Flawless
Everything ought to be better now. Her husband Tomas has managed to remain sober after being treated
with hypnoses by Dr. Bjerre. And Maj is doing everything she can for the family to have a nice home
and be a perfect housewife. But she feels like she will
never live up to the high expectations – real and imagined – from her husband and his mother Thea.
Maj is a young stay-at-home mother and wife in the welfare
state of the 40’s and 50’s when the housewife was still a desirable ideal and seen as an important profession. She tries
hard to be loving towards her children, and ensure that the
home will be secure, harmonious and flawless. But when
the fatigue, fear and anxiety overpowers her, her doubts and
her obsessiveness set in – nothing she or her family does
seem good enough. Tomas is struggling to refrain from alcohol, and manage the company inherited by his family, but
the suspicion that perhaps he started drinking again hangs
heavily over Maj and the family. Her personal losses Maj
doesn’t want to think about.
This is the second part in Kristina Sandberg’s novel trilogy,
which began with Att föda ett barn, about a house-wife’s
life in Örnsköldsvik in northern Sweden. Maj’s story is one
about motherhood, womanhood and living with alcoholism, her personal struggles in a changing world. It is an in-
timate portray of an unhappy woman which lingers in the
minds of the readers.
Press voices:
”What impresses the most is the ability to build excitement
around a life that on the surface appear to be fairly uneventful.
Some readers of this review might sigh ’but that story, we have
surely read before’ or mutter something about ’boring Swedish
realism’. Dismiss all such thoughts immediately! Believe me when
I say that Sörja för de sina, as well as Att föda ett barn (even if you
don’t have to have read the predecessor to read this) is a real pageturner, that kind of novel that occupies the reader, with characters
who creeps close and stubbornly lingers in the mind after you (reluctantly) have closed the book.” Svenska Dagbladet
”Deafeningly dramatic about the housewife/.../ In the same way
that Kristina Sandberg makes the novel’s underlying anxiety reflect Maj’s inner trembling, the unravelling is congenial after have
moved in Maj’s psyche for most of the nearly five hundred pages,
it’s with Tomas’ narrative perspective that the book is closed.
Maj is left alone beyond our point of view. Peripheral, like the
housewife, noticeable only when the work is not done properly.”
Västerbottens-Kuriren
”Kristina Sandberg has really managed to write a dense continuation to the story of May” Dagens Nyheter
”Sandberg is an evocative storyteller whose sentences almost
crawl under the skin of the reader. Her stories are needed.”
Upsala Nya Tidning
Literary fiction
Aleksander Motturi
Aleksander Motturi, born 1970, has worked at Åbo Academy in Finland, The Wittgenstein Archives at the University of Bergen, on the cultural journal Glänta and is one of the
driving forces behind the Clandestino Institute in Göteborg.
He has translated and written a PhD thesis about Ludwig
Wittgenstein’s remarks on Frazer, written drama and is the
author of the book Etnicism dealing with the contemporary
metamorphosis of racism. Svindlarprästen is Motturi’s second
novel.
Svindlarprästen/The Swindling Priest
He Swindled Everyone and Everything
Women fell for his charm and lost all they owned.
Bishops and chief executives were swindled out of
millions.
A man called John Peter Daniels is deported from Hong
Kong to India, his assumed country of origin. He is ill, with
not long to live. In a way he is at home everywhere and
nowhere. He speaks many languages: Gujarati, Kutchi, English, Swahili, Swedish, Finnish, Spanish and German, but
he has no genuine passport. He seems equally acquainted
with Christianity and Islam as he is with world politics, but
he has no formal education. No one attends his funeral at
the St James cemetery in Baroda.
In Svindlarprästen Aleksander Motturi traces the life of his
father, the man who one day abandoned his wife and children and quite simply went up in smoke. He disappeared,
only to return enmeshed in a web of deceit, making front
page news in all the Swedish evening papers. So who was
the man said to be buried in St James cemetery? The man
who was known by many names but died as John Peter Daniels? Is he even dead? Or is his death feigned, to allow him
to continue with his frauds?
Aleksander Motturi’s multilayered novel is partly about a
man whose whole existence was built on a remarkable combination of total honesty and deception, and partly about
those who were close to him, the family who, throughout
the years, have swung between trying to understand, putting it behind them, forgiving, starting again, and finally,
once and for all, distancing themselves from him.
Svindlarprästen is based on the author’s father who lived as
a conman. The case was reported in every newspaper and
the Swindling Priest became part of 1980s vernacular.
Press voices:
”Motturis novel is just as breathtaking as it is broadly and ambitiously applied. /.../ The feeling when you close the book is that
you haven’t just read a novel about a con man who chose to bluff
his way through life, but just as much a socially critical piece of
writing about a world where some people are born with rights and
money while others are lacking both. ” Borås Tidning
“Svindlarprästen is extremely tempting /.../ He has a style to love
when unknown half-siblings laugh ’manga cartoon laughters’.”
Dagens Nyheter
Literary fiction
Literary fiction
GUNNAR ARDELIUS
Gunnar Ardelius (born 1981) made his debut with the
YA novel Jag behöver dig mer än jag älskar dig.../I Need
You More Than I Love You.... The book has been translated into several languages including English, French
and German. It was nominated for the August Prize
and won the Slangbellan Prize for best debut.
Friheten förde oss hit is Gunnar Ardelius’ fourth book,
the first aimed at adult readers.
Friheten förde oss hit
The Love of Liberty Brought Us Here
March 2012, 208 pages
Rights sold to: Actes Sud, France
English sample translation available
A Family Drama in 1960s Liberia
“The sweat ran down their backs. The long journey
from an icy and chilly Stockholm was over; they
had arrived in Yekepa. The powerful sun beat down
on patches of unprotected skin and the dust settled
quickly again on the ground. Like a herd of frightened animals they clung close together.”
Hektor, Margret and their teenage son Mårten have just
landed in Liberia. It is the end of the 1960s and Hektor is
about to start his new job with the Swedish mining company LAMCO. The journey carried with it the promise of a
new start but he soon realises that his career at the mine will
not be straightforward. He is alarmed by the management’s
attitude towards the local inhabitants and unofficial strike
action is looming.
Margret is unhappy in her new environment and finds the
Liberians both frightening and exasperating. The heat is
oppressive, her nerves are in shreds and she is missing her
lover Axel back in Sweden. The only member of the family
to feel at home in the new country is seventeen year-old
Mårten. He soon befriends the Snake Boy, the family’s unconventional gardener, and meets red-haired Ingela who lo-
ves Hitchcock and The Saint. Mårten is living in a new era;
he believes in change and in the international solidarity of
the proletariat, and he sides with the Liberians against the
colonialists. However, his conviction and naiveté inevitably
drive events to the edge of catastrophe and place the whole
family – and the Snake Boy – in danger.
Friheten förde oss hit, the story of a Swedish family’s destiny
in 1960s Liberia, is intensely gripping with its sense of foreboding and is a fascinating documentation of an often overlooked part of contemporary Swedish history.
Press voices:
“The novel is a quiet gem, continuously moving, very melancholy.”
Göteborgs-Posten
“an exciting novel, vividly formed with a drive which also gives a
realistic picture of how it could actually be for a Swedish family
in Africa in the 1960s. And he writes a precise, nuanced Swedish
with at times original metaphors, without any hint of cliché or
repetition. ” Helsinborgs Dagblad
“a skilled language artist. He writes tersely and deliciously dry, but
sometimes he lets go of objectivity and allows the text to flow out
into poetry. It’s often touchingly beautiful” Sydsvenskan
Literary fiction
Helena Thorfinn
Helena Thorfinn was born in 1964 and worked for many years
as a journalist for newspapers as well as for TV before making
a career change to work as a social analyst for Save the Children and the Swedish International Development Cooperation
Agency (SIDA). After three years at the Swedish Embassy in
Dhaka she and her family returned to Sweden and settled in
Lund. Innan floden tar oss is her debut novel and has sold more
than 11.000 copies to date.
Innan floden tar oss/Sisters by the River
Senior Editor: Susanna Romanus
Lead title in major book club
Gripping Depiction of Women in Bangladesh
“On Saturdays throughout the spring he had sat in
countless Södermalm cafés along with other fathers
of young children, sipped latte and eaten sourdough
bread rolls with brie, crunched on the red pepper that
came with the brie and explained: ‘I’ve been a teacher
now for almost 15 years. It’s time to try something else
for a while. Sometimes you’ve got to have the courage
to make a change. This is Sofia’s big chance.’”
Sofia has high expectations of her new job as head of development co-operation at the Swedish embassy in Dhaka,
the capital of Bangladesh, and Janne grudgingly accepts
that going with her means he will have to assume the role
of stay-at-home dad for their two young children.
At the same time a young woman, Mukta, is murdered by
her husband in a small village deep in the countryside. Her
little sisters Mina and Nazrin decide to take their destiny
into their own hands and flee to Dhaka.
Confronting the reality of Dhaka is equally as overwhelming for Swedish Sofia and Janne as it is for the young sisters
from the village, and despite the different circumstances
their lives soon become linked. The story reveals a world
of grand embassy receptions, exploited textile workers and
Swedish family life. Careerists and idealists gather around
the same swimming pool, and tennis matches and terrorism impact everyday life.
Innan floden tar oss is a novel vibrant with colour and teeming with life and it takes us to places and events at
whirlwind speed. With immediacy and humour Thorfinn
describes the Swedes’ attempts to do good while being politically correct, and she movingly narrates the dreams and
misfortunes of the Bangla girls. A sweeping, powerful and
exciting portrayal touching on the urgent, difficult issues as
well as the everyday ones.
Press voices:
”Innan floden tar oss is an unusually mature and well-written debut, as sharp in its depiction of contemporary customs as in the
analysis of a failure of development policies. It will surely get
many readers. ” Sydsvenskan
”Exciting and enlightening novel of the Swedish development aid
industry ” Aftonbladet
Literary fiction
Mikael Bergstrand
Mikael Bergstrand is a journalist and author from Malmö,
in the south of Sweden. For the last few years, he has lived
with his family in New Delhi but has now moved back to
Sweden.
Delhis vackraste händer
The most beautiful hands in Delhi
Extensive summary and sample translation in English
available
More than 55.000 copies sold
Rights sold to:
Modtryk, Denmark
Aschehoug, Norway
Bazar, Finland
Signatuur, the Netherlands
btb, Germany
Piemme, Italy
La Campana, Spain (Catalan)
Gaïa, France
Alfaguara, Spain (Spanish)
Humour, Warmth and Unexpected Meetings
In Delhis vackraste händer, a middle-aged Swedish
man meets the bustling and colourful life in India
and encounters unexpected passion where he least
expected to find it. Mikael Bergstrand describes this
meeting with warmth and with a large portion of
humour.
Göran Borg is what you might call a “loser”: middle-aged,
increasingly chubby, and without ambitions. His waking
hours are mostly spent on reading a fan blog for football
and thinking about his ex-wife, who left him 8 years, 4
months and 3 days ago. This is his every-day life until one
day when he suddenly gets fired (due to extensive surfing
on said fan blog for football) and is given a year’s worth of
salary in compensation.
When Göran has processed the worst of his bitterness,
he decides to join his best friend Erik on a group trip to
India. But the trip doesn’t at all turn out the way Göran
expected; already at the airport Erik abandons him for
the company of a hot, young girl in the group, and once
they have arrived Göran is struck with a horrible case of
the “Delhi Belly”. Sick, alone and deserted at a shabby ho-
tel in Jaipur, Göran awaits his inevitable death. But then
Yogendra “Yogi” Singh Thakur walks through the door, a
spirited textile merchant armed to the teeth with inexhaustible optimism. With Yogi by his side, Göran is taken
on an inner and outer journey through India, filled with
adventure, strong friendship and intense love.
Press voices:
“Bridget Jones goes 52-year old flabby football nerd”
Tara
”Yogendra Singh Thakur, I would gladly meet him again.”
Sydsvenskan
”It is impossible to write a reflection on India better than Shantaram, but Mikael Bergstrand succeeds in bringing the readers along
to filthy backyards, spicy smells and brightly coloured saris” Metro
”Incredibly funny book. I appoint it the next ‘Centenariansuccess’.” Radio P4, Värmland
“It is so joyful and entertaining to read. You are coming along
on a delightful journey /.../ With a smile on your face you join
Göran on his adventures.” Radio P4, Halland
Literary fiction
EIJA HETEKIVI OLSSON
Eija Hetekivi Olsson, born 1973, grew up in the
Gothenburg suburbs Gårdsten and Bergsjön.
She has worked as a cleaner and as a waitress,
before studying to become a teacher. Ingenbarnsland is her debut.
Ingenbarnsland/No Child’s Land
Januari 2012, 324 pages
Rights sold to: Schildts & Söderströms, Finland
Cappelen Damm, Norge
With Burning Rage and Courage
The parks are littered with trash; the streets are covered with cigarette butts. The bins outside the school
are on fire, and so is the rage inside Miira.
Asphalt court yards, concrete buildings and faces hard as
stone. The place is called Gårdsten, a suburb outside Gothenburg, just like any other working-class suburb outside
any other town. Bored teenagers, junkies and alcoholics
share the semi-empty squares and staircases. The litterbins
outside the school are on fire, and so is the rage inside Miira.
Miira is not like the other kids in the class; shoved together
because of similar backgrounds, pre-determined by the
school as future cleaners and industrial workers. But Miira wants to become a prime minister or a brain surgeon
when she grows up. She alone chooses advanced math in
school and shoplifts medical books to study at home. She
is the kind of girl who never ducks for a fight, who won’t
giggle when guys grope her, who won’t accept any injustices around her. But she is also heavily weighed down by
the burden of her own class—she wants to be better, to do
better, but the society won’t always let her. This is a “no
child’s land”, cemented by blunt bureaucracy and suppressed dreams.
Eija Hetekivi Olsson’s eye-opening debut novel Ingenbarnsland is set in the Gothenburg suburbs in the 80s, and we
follow the girl Miira from her preadolescence to her becoming a young woman. Hetekivi Olsson writes expressively
and with rarely seen intensity; like a welding flame the novel depicts Sweden after the Welfare State. The portray of
Miira is one of the strongest in recent years’ fiction.
Press voices:
“This is a ferociously strong debut /…/ seldom have I read such a
translucent, acute and contemporary description of the extreme
vulnerability of children who live an unprotected life”
Dagens Nyheter
”Reading Ingenbarnsland is like being flung round in a centrifuge.
The world is not the same afterwards.” Norrköpings Tidningar
”Ingenbarnsland with its grim realism is a wonderful debut novel,
filled with extreme linguistic fantasy and with an intelligently executed street view of Swedish class-based society of 25 years ago. I
doubt it looks any different today. In an interview I read that Eija
Hetekivi Olsson is burning with the desire to write more books.
Good! I really want to read more of her work!” Skånska Dagbladet
Crime Fiction
ROBERT KVIBY
Robert Kviby, born 1976, is a full-time writer and lives in Stockholm.
Previously he has worked as a market manager in a major media
company. De korrupta is his litterary debut and the first title in the
series about Annie and Max Lander.
De korrupta/The Corrupt
Februari 2012, 311 pages
Senior Editor: Annika Seward-Jensen, Telegram
Sample translation and extensive summary in English available
More than 32.000 copies sold
Rights sold to: Rowohlt, Germany
Albatros, Poland
Smart, Driven and Exciting to the Very Last Page
”They were all prostitutes. All under thirty. Found in
wooded areas and parks. Naked. They had been killed elsewhere and dumped where their bodies were
discovered. She was convinced it was systematic. All
four of them had met the same man, and it had led to
their deaths. ”
Friday night, January 1989, criminal reporter Annie Lander
is the last one left in the editorial office as usual. For some
time she has been working on a story about four murdered prostitutes, convinced that there is a pattern between
them. The talk of the town is that a private club hosts parties filled with prostitutes and that there might be connections to the murders. Then she is ordered by the newspaper
to seize with her investigations.
Annie continues on her own and is starting to get close,
both to the real story about the women, as well as to the
truth about her own life and the unsolved murder of her
mother. And then suddenly she is gone.
Annie’s husband Max soon realizes that the police won’t
exert themselves to find her, that it is all up to him. He follows her investigation to a country manor owned by a powerful corporate magnate, close to where her mother had
been found dead thirty years earlier. But nothing has prepared him for what he will find.
De korrupta is a thrilling read from the first page to the last.
This impressive debut novel introduces Annie and Max
Lander, and their crusade against the corrupt.
Press voices:
“To the true conspiracy theorist, MTG-director Robert Kviby’s
hard-boiled detective story is a pleasure. To gather research Kviby
has tiptoed around the Wanted editorial team and got inside info
from various gentlemen’s clubs. Well done! “ Metro
”De korrupta is a really exciting book that is hard to put down.
Kviby has decided to place his history in the 80s, an unusual era
in crime novels. Kvibys descriptions of settings and time are vivid
and they are naturally woven into the history.” Bokbrus.se
crime fiction
Press voices for Kommer aldrig mer igen/Never Coming Back:
”Naturally Hans Koppel, alias Petter Lidbeck, should use his swift-minded punchy stile to write crime novels.” Dagens Nyheter
“Koppel is a very fine writer but it’s as a machine perfectly designed to provoke compulsive page-turning
that makes this book so sensational. I read it in two long sessions and if you’re the sort of person who
doesn’t need much sleep, you’ll do it in one.” Morning Star
”A supremely professional piece of work with a palpable sense of tension, and couched in unvarnished
prose.” The Independent
”crisp and simple yet devastatingly effective, this is an unrelenting, terrifying slab of a psychological thriller
which ticks all the right boxes.” Daily Mirror
“There are some fine stories out there and this is probably one of the best.” 612 ABC Brisbane Radio
“It is exciting and there aren’t many superfluous scenes here. It reminds me of Hitchcock’s devilishly effective paranoia films /.../ Lidbeck/Koppel has a sure sense of style, not least when it comes to a genre where
most Swedish thriller-writers fail: to write entertaining and hard-hitting dialogue which also moves the
plot along.” Helsingborgs Dagblad
“An icecold and cleverly composed thriller on guilt and revenge.” Sydsvenskan
“Lidbeck is a skilled writer.” Expressen
”If you like your books on the gritty and violent side – it really isn’t pretty in that cellar – then why not try
this harrowing tale of bitter revenge.” Peterborough Evening Telegraph
”It is exciting form the first page to the last. The author builds up an infernal and nail-biting dramatic situation.” DAST Magazine
The Book of the Month (March 2011, Your Life Magazine):
”Hans Koppel’s crime thriller is skilfully construed and sometimes really, really scary /.../ you are pushed
along at a furious pace, curious as to how it will end.”
”[Hans Koppel] writes refreshingly direct /.../ he touches upon loneliness and male friendship with sensitivity. Delightfully unpleasant read-in-one-go material, the plot is just bloody disgusting.”
”Revenge is not just sweet; it can also be very, very raw – which Hans Koppel proves to me in his new thriller. /.../ and although I have a suspicion how it will all end, I am sucked into the exciting plot and can’t stop
reading. I want more, more, more.”
”A dense thriller of the suspenseful type with an unexpected ending.” BTJ
”Hans Koppel’s thriller debut is not for the faint of heart, because the Swedish author understands superbly
how to spread fear and terror. He plays perfectly on the instruments of the genre and keeps up the tension
literally until the last page.” Buchjournal
”Just 24 hours with a break of six hours sleep - that’s all I needed to read Kommer aldrig mer igen. Despite
it being a 350-page thick novel. But as soon as I had grabbed hold of Hans Koppel’s debut novel, stopping was no longer an option. The Scandinavian author has achieved an incredibly engrossing thriller
that is selling like hot cakes in ten countries already.” Berliner Kurier
”The detective novel is strongly reminiscent of the fate of Natascha Kampusch, who was also kidnapped and held prisoner in a small basement room for more than 3069 days by her tormentors /.../ Hans
Koppel presents in his debut thriller a psychological novel that skilfully mixes reality and fantasy into a
dense fabric. ” Siegener Zeitung
Crime Fiction
Hans Koppel
Petter Lidbeck, born 1964, lives in Stockholm. Under the
pseudonym ‘Hans Koppel’ he has previously published
three satirical novels about the Swedish middle class of
today. Kommer aldrig mer igen/Never coming back, his
first thriller in a planned trilogy, has now sold more than
60 000 copies in the UK and 50 000 copies in Sweden!
Kommer aldrig mer igen
Never Coming Back
January 2011, 251 pages
Senior Editor: Annika Seward Jensen, Telegram
Kom ska vi tycka om varandra
You’re Mine Now
Senior Editor: Annika Seward Jensen, Telegram
Tidigare titlar av
om Vi i villa (2008)
»vårens bästa samtidsskildring«
Expressen
»Norénkänsla och humor i skön mix«
Aftonbladet
»stilren och effektiv«
Svenska Dagbladet
––––––
om Medicinen (2009)
»synnerligen underhållande«
Tidningen Kulturen
»humor och sanningar i en skruvad roman«
Tidningen Vi
»ett riktigt lyckopiller«
Bibliotekstipset
––––––
om Kungens födelsedag (2010)
»Ett stycke lysande samtidssatir.«
Kristianstadsbladet
»osviklig känsla för skenbart banala detaljer, distinktioner och tecken i tiden«
Dalarnas Tidning
»dags att kliva ut på scenen och tacka för de väl
förtjänta applåderna«
Sydsvenskan
An icecold and cleverly composed thriller
International critics raved about Koppel’s crime debut Kommer aldrig mer igen. Now he’s back with another terrifying thriller that gets under your skin.
care that she has a husband and a daughter that she loves,
and soon the conversation is alarming Anna. He will do
anything to be with her, and soon the lives of her loved ones
are in danger.
Anna is living happily with her husband and daughter outside the southern city of Helsingborg. She and two of her
female colleagues – the power troika of the Family Journal – are on a weekend conference to lay the plans for the
coming year.
Calle Collin – the journalist we met in Never Coming Back
– plays a brief part in this story too. The location in southern Sweden also connects this novel with the first in the
series but what ties them together even more, is the theme
– Hans Koppel is back with a new thrilling novel about actions and consequences.
After dinner, Anna is courted by an attractive young man
working at a local ad agency. Unlike her two colleagues,
Anna has never been unfaithful, not even thought about
it, but Eric is 15 years younger, athletic and intensive and
she simply falls for his charms. It is the best sex Anna has
ever had, but a mistake, and she is immediately regretful.
She goes to Erik’s place to end their affair before it goes any
further, but ends up in bed with him instead.
Anna tries to break up with Erik without hurting his
feelings, but he reacts with jealousy and anger. Erik doesn’t
Rights sold to:
Little, Brown, UK • Pegasus, US
Front Forlag, Norway • Bruna, the Netherlands
Heyne, Germany • Presses de la Cité, France
Piemme, Italy • Ayrinti, Turkey
Eurasian, Taiwan • Weltbild/Swiat Ksiazki, Poland
Verus/Record Publishing Group, Brazil
CITIC Press, China • Planeta, Spain
People’s Press, Denmark
Crime Fiction
The Sebastian Bergman Series
Michael Hjorth and Hans Rosenfeldt got off to a flying
start with the publication of their debut Det fördolda/
Dark Secrets in 2010. With psychologist and profiler Sebastian Bergman – an arrogant and narcissistic womanizer
with a personal trauma – in the lead role, Hjorth & Rosenfeldt had created an instant success.
Months before Det fördolda was published in Sweden,
translation rights were sold to nine countries. After the
publication, to great reviews, the novel could be found on
the bestseller list, where it remained for eight months. So
far Det fördolda has sold 190.000 copies in Sweden.
Lärjungen/The Disciple was published in August 2011. This
second part in the series reveals to the readers even more
about Sebastian Bergman, in a breath-taking roller coaster
ride where Sebastian is confronted with his past, and with
his nemesis. Since publication, Lärjungen has sold more
than 145.000 copies.
The third part of the series, Fjällgraven/The Mountain
Grave, will be published in October 2012.
Rights sold to:
Norway, Aschehoug • Danmark, Hr Ferdinand
Finland, Bazaar • Iceland, Bjartur
Germany, Rowohlt • The Netherlands, De Bezige Bij
France, Serpent à Plumes • Italy, Einaudi
Greece, Psichogios • Poland, Czarna Owca
Czech Republic, Host • Russia, Corpus
Romania, Editura Trei • Hungary, Animus
Turkey, Pegasus • Brazil, Intrinseca
Australia & New Zealand, Murdoch
UK, Trapdoor/Little, Brown • US, Grand Central
Press voices for Hjorth/Rosenfeldt’s previous books:
“Congratulations! The best Swedish debut since Larsson…?”
Kristianstadsbladet (SE)
“Det fördolda is a sensationally good Swedish crime novel.”
Hallands Nyheter (SE)
“Sebastian Bergman is a postitive addition to the crime world.
An excellent thriller.” Het Parol (NL)
”An astoundingly smart thriller” De telegraaf (NL)
”The best Swedish crime export of 2011.” Die Welt (DE)
Crime Fiction
Hjorth & Rosenfeldt
Michael Hjorth was born in 1963 in Visby. He is one of
Scandinavia’s most accomplished screenwriters and producers,
and one of the founders of the internationally successful production company Tre Vänner.
Hans Rosenfeldt was born in 1964 in Borås. He has written
screenplays for twenty drama series, including the international
success Bron/The Bridge and has hosted both radio and television
shows.
The Sebastian Bergman Series:
Det fördolda/Dark Secrets
Lärjungen/The Disciple
Fjällgraven/The Mountain Grave
Full English translation of Det fördolda available
Who Lies in the Mountain Grave?
Two women are hiking in the mountains of Jämtland
in the North of Sweden. It’s autumn and it’s raining
hard, and when one of them gets too close to the edge
above a raging torrent, the ground gives way and the
woman falls. She manages to save herself, but she
and her friend make a macabre discovery: the hand
of a skeleton is protruding from the river bank.
The local police arrive at the scene and start digging
and find that there is more than one body buried in the
ground. When the area is fully excavated six bodies have
been found; four adults and two children. The Crime Investigation Department (CID) is called in, and Sebastian
Bergman travels to Jämtland along with the rest of the
team.
It is quickly established that the six were buried at the
same time, but only two of the bodies can be easily identified as a Dutch couple who were reported missing in November 2003. The others remain a mystery – their DNA
prove that they are a family, but no family had been reported missing that autumn. Another mystery is the car
accident in the area the same week that the Dutch couple
disappeared. The body of a woman had been found in a
brunt-out rental car, but the American name in which
the car had been registered leads nowhere. A lot of things
don’t quite add up.
In the mean time, a television journalist is investigating
a so-called asylum deviation; according to authorities two
male Afghan refugees went underground in summer of
2003. Shibeka, wife to one of the men, refuses to believe
that her husband would leave his family voluntarily and
the journalist she has contacted suspects that there might
be a real, big story to detect.
In Fjällgraven we follow profiler and psychologist Sebastian Bergman and his colleagues in the CID team again, and
get even closer to them than we have before. In a thrilling
pursuit of the truth, they are up against powerful forces
who are willing to go to the ends of the earth to make
their secret agenda remain secret.
Crime Fiction
Maria Lang
The queen of cosy crime, Maria Lang (1914-1991), wrote
42 much loved detective stories. Her debut Mördaren
ljuger inte ensam /The Murderer Doesn’t Lie Alone was
published in 1949 and was followed by a new book each
year until 1991.
Maria Lang (pseud. for Dagmar Lange) had a PhD in
Literature and worked as a director of studies and senior lecturer at the New Elementary School for Girls in
Stockholm from 1948 and until 1974. She lived at times
in Nora, where she moved after her retirement. Maria
Lang was a member of the Swedish detective academy.
Available material: German sample translation of
Se, döden pa dig väntar/See Death Upon You Wait.
The Grand Old Lady of Swedish Crime
Sweden’s answer to Agatha Christie, and the origin
of the crime novel wave of our times. She debuted in
1949 with Mördaren ljuger inte ensam and for the
next 42 years she published one book per year.
Maria Lang was for a long time one of the most popular
and widely read crime writers but has been neglected lately. Her books are traditional puzzle mysteries often set
in the academic environment or in the small mining town
Skoga, a slight euphemism for Nora where the author lived
for many years.
Christer Wijk, a handsome and pipe-smoking detective is
the recurrent problem solver in her books. The protagonist in the first novels is the dashing professor’s daughter
Puck Ekstedt, but from Vår sång blir stum/Our song is dumb
(1960), Almi Graan (an anagram of Maria Lang) a detective
novelist helps Wijk solve the criminal mysteries.
Maria Lang describes human passions and erotic conflicts
but is sometimes startlingly modern. Like in her first novel,
where she makes a both matter of fact and passionate plea
that also homosexual love is real love. And this is written
only five years after homosexuality was decriminalized and
thirty years before the Swedish Board of Health and Welfare stopped declaring it a disease.
Swedish television channel, TV4, is making a series based
on six of Maria Lang’s books from the forties and fifties,
all set around Skoga and in different seasons. The first film
will be shown in cinemas, and the tv-series that will be broadcasted in 2013 will be shown internationally, Denmark,
Norway and Finland are confirmed so far.
Norstedts will re-launch this vintage crime gem in the
spring of 2013 with Maria Lang’s first three books in new
editions with an imagery of the 1950’s.
Crime Fiction
Mördaren ljuger inte ensam
The Murderer Doesn’t Lie Alone
On a remote island in a divine lake lies Rutger’s dream cabin, a paradise
for stressed city people. A handful of guests are playing around on the
island, swimming, sailing and dancing. But for some it turns into more
than a game. One is murdered. One becomes a murderer. And they all
have something to hide.
Senior Editor: Peter Karlsson
Rights sold to: Silke, Norway
Gummerus, Finland
Farligt att förtära/Harmful if Eaten
At a theatre performance in connection with a student party at the secondary school the heroin drops dead on stage, poisoned. Shortly after another girl is found dead under the stage. The tension and fear is
spreading in the school.
Gummerus, Finland
Inte flera mord/No More Murders
Newlyweds, Puck and Einar Bure, are planning to spend a restful holiday together with Puck’s father Professor Johannes Ekstedt, in the idyllic
small town Skoga. But on the first day the Professor finds a dead young
man outside his window. When inquisitive Puck starts scrutinizing the
small society she finds that under the pleasant surface hatred, jealousy
and cruelty are lurking.
Gummerus, Finland
narrative non-fiction
Ingrid Carlberg
Ingrid Carlberg is a journalist and author. She worked
for the major Swedish daily newspaper, Dagens Nyheter,
for the last 20 years. Her latest book, Pillret/The Pill, was
awarded no less than three prizes among them Guldspaden, for best investigative journalism 2008.
Det står ett rum här och väntar på dig
- Berättelsen om Raoul Wallenberg
Raoul Wallenberg - a Biography
May 2012, 750 pages
Senior Editor: Stefan Hilding
More than 14.000
copies sold
“A truly fascinating, subtle and revelatory portrait of this enigmatic character and
perhaps the closest any historian has got to the real man and the truth of his fate.”
— Simon Sebag Montefiore
Raoul Wallenberg had envisioned a different life. He
sought no hero role and no real adventure. In the spring
of 1944, he would turn 32 years old and he worked for a
small trading company that imported geese, turkeys and
egg powder from Hungary. He was trained as an architect,
went for a career in business but found it difficult to find
his ways.
Then the Holocaust came to Hungary. An American-Swedish Rescue Action for the last remnants of Europe’s Jewish population was discussed. Swedish Government was
urged to send someone. But who? A series of coincidences
meant that all eyes fell on the food retailer Raoul Wallenberg.
Six months later, thousands of Hungarian Jews had the
young Swede to thank for their lives. In January 1945 Raoul
Wallenberg voluntarily went to meet the Soviet troops in a
bombed out Budapest. He would never return to Sweden.
of an historical research effort in up until now unknown
and unexploited archives. For the first time ever, the full
story of Raoul Wallenberg is presented, using all the sources available today - his childhood and early career in
Stockholm during the War, the dramatic short six months
in Budapest, the circumstances surrounding his arrest and
imprisonment in the Soviet Union, and the lengthy political game about his fate until this day. For the first time we
get to follow Raoul Wallenberg’s family through the entire
series of tragic diplomatic failures, which led to him never
coming back.
The author Ingrid Carlberg has with scientific precision
produced a shattering reading experience, where famous
characters in history come to life. The person Raoul Wallenberg emerges from the shadows, as well as his life in
Moscow prisons. Recurrent connections to recent history
creates a deeper understanding of what really happened
and why.
Det står ett rum här och väntar på dig is not only a great
story that will take your breath away. It is also the result
Daniel Goldberg & Linus Larsson
Daniel Goldberg och Linus Larsson are two of Sweden’s most well
known tech- and IT journalists. Their articles have been published
in among others, Washington Post and quoted in BBC News, The
New York Times och The Sydney Morning Herald.
Minecraft
Senior Editor: Stefan Skog
Rights sold to:
Seven Stories Press, US (World English)
Minecraft - A Success Story
Markus Persson, to most of his fans know as ”Notch”,
has become a legend. He is an inspiration and a beacon for thousands of small-scale game developers all
over the world. But outside the video game industry,
pretty much nobody has heard of him.
Three years ago, Markus Persson was a bored it-developer
in Stockholm, spending his days at a mundane software development firm. In the evenings, he toiled away on a labour
of love: an obscure game to be played online. The game was
called Minecraft. Markus released it to the world in early
2009. At first hardly anyone cared, but the rumour of the
ingeniously simple game quickly spread.
Today, Minecraft (named one of the top 50 inventions of
2011 by Time Magazine) is a global phenomenon and Markus Persson is a multi millionaire and in the world of computer games, he is a superstar - over half a million people
follow his movements on twitter.
Minecraft is more than a game, more like doing something
together with others, it’s quite similar to a digital Lego box
and a Minecraft-Lego is actually being produced. Almost
anything can be built into the game’s block-and pixel world,
to fill it with construction together with other players is the
aim.
Minecraft is an unparalleled success, with twenty million
registered users and thousands of fans who gather at Minecraft conventions, dressed up as their favourite characters
from the game. In hundreds of schools throughout Europe
and the US, Minecraft is being introduced as a teachers’
tool in helping young children understand concepts such as
teamwork, social codes, engineering and computer science
skills.
Minecraft is one of the fastest growing cultural phenomena
of the internet age. In 2012 Norstedts will publish the first
book on Minecraft, for which the authors have interviewed creator and online legend ”Notch”. It is a gripping and
heartwarming tale that has never been told in full before,
of one man’s unlikely rise from rags to riches. It is also an
in-depth case study of a phenomenon that is changing
global youth culture and challenging established billiondollar business models through the disruptive power of the
internet.
Literary fiction
Mårten Blomkvist
Mårten Blomkvist has been writing
about movies for a long time, mostly
in Dagens Nyheter, he is also active as
a lecturer. Since 1977 he lives together
with Bo Widerberg’s daughter Nina.
Höggradigt jävla excentrisk En biografi över Bo Widerberg
Eccentric to the Bloody Extreme A Bo Widerberg Biography
Eccentric to the Bloody Extreme
”My reasoning starts from the view that no really
good Swedish film has been made in modern times,
that the best film in each genre can not compete with
the best foreign film in the same genre," wrote Bo Widerberg in 1962 when he tried to start a debate on
Swedish film.
When he soon afterwards began directing himself he appeared ready to live up to the commitment to raise Swedish film to an international level. Bo Widerberg did not
care how they used to do things in Sweden. He admired
the French new wave, and his starting point was how the
best in the European and American film industry worked.
The result was classics like Kvarteret Korpen, Elvira Madigan, Ådalen 31 och Mannen på taket.
Bo Widerberg demanded the best for his films. His demands and his aversion to planning, the enemy to spontaneity, made him difficult to work with. He scared the
producers and wore out his film crews and as a result he
didn’t make as many movies as he had wished. But his
films, and the actors in them, won awards in both Sweden
and abroad, and many thought afterwards that it had been
fantastic to work with a man who, according to Roy Andersson, "was not afraid to ask for anything".
Mårten Blomqvist has used interviews with nearly ninety
employees, friends, enemies, relatives and wives to describe Bo Widerberg’s struggle - from his debut with Barnvagnen in 1963 to the finale Lust och fägring stor in 1995 - to
make Swedish movies that could compete with the best
foreign in the same genre.
Press voices:
"Anyone who wants to follow the great Swedish filmmaker and
his films can get a lot out of reading the more than 550 pages"
Allehanda
"A very solid work that every movie interested person should
read" Dalslänningen
"Mårten Blomkvist's book is impressive" Skånska Dagbladet
"It's a substantial, energetic biography" Arbetarbladet
"A detailed, lively and vividly drawn picture of Widerberg's life"
Expressen
"The Widerberg biography is constantly entertaining, stimulating, full of previously unknown anecdotes from various stormy
film sets and elsewhere, as well as dramaturgically catchy and
stringently structured." Norrbottens Kuriren
"It was about bloody time that a book was written about his
headstrong man" Helsingborgs Dagblad
Jesper Bengtson
Jesper Bengtsson is a journalist and author. He has followed
developments in Burma for more than ten years. Jesper is the
chairman of the Swedish section of Reporters sans frontières
[Reporters Without Borders].
Aung San Suu Kyi – En kamp för frihet
Aung San Suu Kyi – A biography
November 2011, 263 pages
Senior Editor: Stefan Skog
Rights sold to:
Spartacus, Norway
Minerva, Finland
Turbulenz, Denmark
HarperCollins, Australia
Potomac Books, USA
Amaryllis, India
De Geus, The Netherlands
Morning Star, Taiwan
Rotbuch Verlag, Germany
Aung San Suu Kyi – A Biography
In May 2010, Norstedts published Jesper Bengtsson’s biography on Burma opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize
laureate Aung San Suu Kyi. Since then, Aung San Suu Kyi
was released from house arrest in November 2010 and in
February 2011 Jesper Bengtsson managed to interview her.
In November 2011, the revised and updated version of this
celebrated biography was released.
“We sit down in a sofa a few feet away from each other. She
seems relaxed and perfectly composed. I ask her about her
energy and apparently good mood.
’It´s not strange at all’, she says with an ironic glimpse in her
eyes. ’The military gave me seven years of rest, so now I´m
full of energy to continue my work.’
That´s mildly spoken an interesting approach to time, that
someone with a less optimistic view on life would define as
wasted. But that´s how she seems to be, this Nobel Prize laureate and democratic icon. She has survived all these years
of isolation by embracing it and pick out the up sides rather
than the obvious down sides.”
Press voices:
“To anyone who wants to try to understand why, I highly
recommended Burma scholar Jesper Bengtsson’s initiated,
highly readable biography.” Östgöta Correspondenten
”An excellent biography” Tidningen Ångermanland
”An engaging and believable portrait of a remarkable woman who stands out against the harrowing backdrop of
Burma’s sad story, that Bengtsson know better than most.
I confess: my admiration is endless.” Dagens Nyheter
”Read this book. Not to get an objective analysis of Aung
San Suu Kyi’s political achievements, but to get a background and understanding of why she has been under house
arrest for 14 of the last 20 years and why she chose not to travel to her husband’s deathbed in March 1999.” Norra Skåne
Niklas Zetterling & Dan Öberg
Niklas Zetterling, born 1963, is an author and military historian
working at the Swedish Military Academy in Stockholm. His first
book Avgörandets ögonblick written together with Michael Tamelander was followed by a number of books on military history.
Dan Öberg is a military historian, he speaks Japanese and took his
doctor’s degree in Japan.
Kampen om Stilla havet
The Battle of the Pacific
Rights sold to: Informations Forlag, Denmark
Option publishers:
Spartacus, Norway
Casemate Publishers, USA
The Battle of the Pacific
The Pacific War was the most extensive and costly
naval campaign ever fought. Initially the Imperial
Japanese Navy attained its strategic goals, but over
time they met with increasingly powerful American
resistance.
the carriers who witnessed the air attacks and experienced
the bombings. Many mistakes and errors of judgment were
made because no one had been involved in this type of
battle before. The Pacific war saw rapid escalation with no
time for full training, and the book describes the combatants’ attempts to adapt to changing circumstances.
The Battle of Midway is the best known confrontation and
is often called the turning point of the Pacific, but several
other very dramatic naval battles feature in this book, in
which the two Japanese aircraft carriers Shokaku and Zuikaku take centre stage. The men who found themselves in
the Pacific war zone fought a battle in which they often
lacked reliable information. In the Coral Sea, north east of
Australia, the first fleet action in history involving the engagement of aircraft carriers took place. Japanese carriers
Shokaku and Zuikaku took on the US fleet carriers Lexicon
and Yorktown.
The war at sea, involving aircraft carriers operating with
the latest aircraft and newly-developed radar, was dependent on the most advanced technology of the day. Despite
this, military personnel played a significant role. The book
portrays human destinies on the aircraft carriers, based on
diaries, letters, interviews with war veterans, archive material, and includes medical officers, pilots, radio engineers
and many other individuals. The authors introduce characters in the wider context of war, with a discussion of issues
such as the arrival of the kamikaze units, the willingness to
fight against the American super power, field brothels and
strategic planning.
We read about the Japanese pilots who searched in vain for
their opponent’s main striking force, and the men onboard
from our backlist – literary fiction
Håkan Bravinger, Bära bud/The messenger of Peace
sold to: Gyldendal, Denmark • Arneberg, Norway • Btb, Germany • JC Lattès, France • Czarna Owca, Poland
STIG DAGERMAN, with newly written prefaces by PO Enquist, JM Le Clezio, Siri Hustvedt and
Elfride Jelinek, Ormen/The Snake, Bränt barn/A burnt Child, De dömdas ö/The Island of the Doomed,
Tysk höst/German Autumn
sold to: Iperborea, Italy • Actes Sud, France • University of Minesota Press, US • among others
Per Olov Enquist, Ett annat liv/Another Kind of Life
sold to: MacLehose, World English • Actes Sud, France • Carl Hanser, Germany • Ambo Anthos, the Netherlands • Gyldendal, Norway • Rosinante, Denmark • Iperborea, Italy • Host, Czech republic • Europa, Hungary • Destino, Spain
Anneli Jordahl, Augustenbad en sommar/Augustenbad, One Summer
sold to: Vega, Norway • Suhrkamp, Germany
TORGNY LINDGREN, Minnen/Reminiscences
sold to: Gyldendal, Norway • Rosinante, Denmark • De Geus, the Netherlands • Tammi, Finland • Loomingu
Raamatukogu, Estonia • Actes Sud, France
MARIA SVELAND, Bitterfittan/Bitter Bitch
sold to: Versal, Norway • Modtryk, Denmark • Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Germany • De Geus, the Netherlands
• Constable & Robinson, World English • Jota, Czech Republic • Czarna Owca, Poland
Amanda Svensson, Välkommen till den här världen/Welcome to This World
sold to: Actes Sud, France
from our backlist – crime fiction
———————————————————————————————————----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
THOMAS BODSTRÖM, Rymmaren/The Escapee, Idealisten/The Idealist, Lobbyisten/The Lobbyist
sold to: Heyne, Germany • Pegasus, Turkey • Empik, Poland • Urdur, Iceland
ÅKE EDWARDSON, The Inspector Winter Series
Dans med en ängel/Dance With an Angel, Rop från långt avstånd/A Distant Cry, Sol och skugga/Sun and Shade,
Låt det aldrig ta slut/Never End et al
sold to: Ullstein, Germany • J.C. Lattes, France • Simon & Schuster US, World English • Rosinante, Denmark • Tiden,
Norway • Like, Finland • Bruna, the Netherlands • among others
Denise Rudberg, The Marianne Jidhoff Series
Ett litet snedsprång/Stepping Over the Line, Två gånger är en vana/Twice is a Habit
sold to: Cappelen Damm, Norway • Amazon, World English
Rights List 2012
norstedts agency
literary fiction
—————————————————————————————————-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Johannes Anyuru
Gunnar Ardelius
Mikael Bergstrand
Jonas Gardell Mariette Glodeck
Jonas Hassen Khemiri
Eija Hetekivi Olsson
Aleksander Motturi
Karolina Ramqvist
Kristina Sandberg
Helena Thorfinn
Robert Åsbacka
En storm kom från paradiset/A Storm Blew in from Paradise
Friheten förde oss hit/The Love of Liberty Brought Us Here
Delhis vackraste händer/The most beautiful Hands in Delhi
Torkar aldrig tårar utan handskar/Never Wipe Tears Without Gloves
Den sista dagen i december/The Last Day of December
Jag ringer mina bröder/I’m Calling My Brothers
Ingenbarnsland/No Child´s Land
Svindlarprästen/The Swindling Priest
Alltings början/The Beginning of Everything
Sörja för de sina/Taking Care of One’s Own
Innan floden tar oss/Sisters by the River
Samlaren/The Collector
crime fiction
———————————————————————————————————----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Michael Hjorth & Hans Rosenfeldt The Sebastian Bergman Series:
Det fördolda/Dark Secrets (2010)
Lärjungen/The Disciple (2011)
Fjällgraven/The Mountain Grave (2012)
Hans Koppel
The Collin Series:
Kommer aldrig mer igen/Never Coming Back (2011)
Kom ska vi tycka om varandra/You’re Mine Now (2012)
Robert Kviby
De korrupta/The Corrupt (2012)
Maria Lang Mördaren ljuger inte ensam/The Murderer Doesn’t Lie Alone (1949/2013)
Farligt att förtära/Harmful if Eaten (1950/2013)
Inte flera mord/No More Murders (1951/2013)
———————————————————————————————————----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jesper Bengtsson
Aung San Suu Kyi - En kamp för frihet/Aung San Suu Kyi - A Biography
Mårten Blomqvist
Höggradigt jävla excentrisk - En biografi över Bo Widerberg/Eccentric to the Bloody Extreme - A Bo Widerberg Biography
Ingrid Carlberg Det står ett rum här och väntar på dig - Berättelsen om Raoul Wallenberg
/Raoul Wallenberg – a biography
Daniel Goldberg & Linus Larsson Minecraft
Niklas Zetterberg & Dan Öberg
Kampen om Stilla havet/The Battle of the Pacific
For more information about our books:
Linda Altrov Berg
Fiction, general-non fiction
Phone +46 10 744 20 33
Mobile + 46 705 65 22 70
www.norstedtsagency.se
Catherine Mörk
Phone +46 10 744 20 34
Mobile + 46 702 04 26 05
Åsa Bergman
Phone +46 10 744 21 10
Mobile + 46 733 02 82 00

He Swindled Everyone and Everything

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