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Swedish Book Review

Swedish Book Review is committed to bringing Swedish-language literature to the English-speaking world, and to promoting works in translation.

Join our mailing list here: http://eepurl.com/hirWDL Launched in 1983, SBR presents Swedish-language literature to the English-speaking world, through feature articles, translated extracts, interviews, book reviews and more. Our aim is to provide a timely and independent outlook on Sweden’s vibrant literary landscape, from established writers to up-and-coming voices. We publish, review and discuss

a wide range of literature, children’s fiction, graphic novels, narrative non-fiction and poetry. We strive for breadth and diversity of coverage, raising different gender issues, sexual orientation, ethnicity and life experience. SBR is editorially independent, but gratefully acknowledges funding from the Swedish Arts Council. We are also grateful to have received grants from the Swedish Academy, the Anglo-Swedish Literary Foundation and Finnish Literature Exchange. Swedish and Finland-Swedish publishers and agents kindly provide books, useful information, and permissions. Our contributors have a wealth of experience, and many have translation prizes and awards to their names. We also aim to encourage and publish emerging translators working out of Swedish. SBR is published by Norvik Press and is the journal of SELTA (the Swedish-English Literary Translators' Association). In 2021 we will launch our full website and membership package, including access to our online archive and exclusive member benefits.

16/07/2025

‪
"The fields luxuriate in a furiously green hue. Nature appears tamed, or at least adequately conquered: a beast that has been persuaded to obey and produce."

From 'Backwater Beast' (Bygdedjuret) by Sven Olov Karlsson, translated by Alex Fleming.

Read the full extract in the latest issue:

by Sven Olov Karlsson, translated by Alex Fleming

15/06/2025

"Mum was a typical Japanese woman of the older generation for whom caution was a virtue and recklessness a sign of stupidity. And just about anybody would understand that taking on one of Japan’s leading post-war writers as a debut literary translation assignment was borderline suicidal. It turned out, however, that I had completely misjudged Mum."

✍️

When Yukiko Duke’s mother passed away in 2024, it marked the end of an era as their work translating from Japanese to Swedish came to a close. In a personal essay first published in Sweden's ‘Vi Läser’, Yukiko writes about their relationship and how one telephone call changed everything.

Read the article in our latest issue, translated by Ian Giles.

https://swedishbookreview.org/joy-translating-gone

by Yukiko Duke, translated by Ian Giles

16/05/2025

🎶As KAJ prepare to take to the Eurovision Grand Final stage with the lovable earworm 'Bara Bada Bastu', we revisit an evergreen - and aptly themed - story by group member Axel Åhman , published in SBR 2021:1. Darcy Hurford's whip-smart translation guides us through this humourous, high-stakes sauna power struggle...

🌲

"The glass door slides silently open. Hot air hits me like a slap in the face. The dark of the sauna envelops me and my very short-sighted eyes try frantically to get a sense of the space. Is someone sitting there? Who’s got the water scoop? Was that a movement in the corner? I breathe out and feel the warmth of my breath against my chest. It’s almost empty in here. I’ve practically got my own private sauna at the swimming baths; what a luxury..."

Read the rest of the extract here:

TRANSLATED STORY

03/05/2025

beauty itself draws the veil away
uncovers itself
it isn’t up to you

🏺

Ellen Nordmark's ambitious poetic epic interrogates the cosmos, underworld, and current global political landscape through the intermingling of contemporary tragedy and ancient mythologies.

Read a translated extract by Gina Abelkop in our latest issue: https://swedishbookreview.org/epos

Thanks to Modernista.

by Ellen Nordmark, translated by Gina Abelkop

22/04/2025

"The longer she gets to sit there, the more she understands. She can understand with her hands. She can understand with her feet. She can understand with her smelling, the smells. And that’s bigger than everything."

🌺

"To read Leken is to rediscover a life in which the generalisations we use to make sense of the world are not yet developed – a carefree balance of simplicity and complexity, of feeling you know everything and nothing at the same time."

Read an extract from 'The Game' (Leken) by Jörgen Gassilewski, translated by Jane Davis.

by Jörgen Gassilewski, translated by Jane Davis

12/04/2025

“They were everything I wasn’t, and that’s why I loved them. I wondered if Minna and Jasse also thought of us as a pride of lions. Prides of lions hunt antelope and hate girls who hate the wind. Girls like that always got stroppy because it messed up their hair, and we weren’t girls like that. Maybe we weren’t even girls.

Maybe we were just lions.”

🦁

Linda Jones's latest offering, Pride of Lions (Lejonflock) is a layered text about complex questions of re-venge and responsibility, viewed through the prism of secondary-school friendships.

Read a translated extract by Alice Menzies in our latest issue.

https://swedishbookreview.org/pride-lions

Bonnier Carlsen Nordin Agency

by Linda Jones, translated by Alice Menzies

09/04/2025

“How should you dress on inauguration into a prestigious organisation like the Swedish Academy? For men, formal wear is the obvious answer. For women though, things are trickier.”

Originally published in 2018, Sara Danius’ essay ‘Dressed for Chair No 7’ (Klädd för stol 7) describes how she and haute-couturist Pär Engsheden responded to this question, upon her election to the Swedish Academy as first – and so far only – female permanent secretary.

🧵

"Pär Engsheden had completed his dress trilogy. Which is what it was in the end: a literary silk fantasy in three acts; a colourful triptych made of textiles."

Read it now in our latest issue, translated by Darcy Hurford.

by Sara Danius, introduced and translated by Darcy Hurford

27/03/2025

SBR 2025:1 is now live! Featuring works by Sara Danius, Yukiko Duke, Jörgen Gassilewski, Linda Jones, Sven Olov Karlsson, Ellen Nordmark, Lida Starodubtseva and more.
https://swedishbookreview.org/2025-1
Photo credit: Maureen Eijpe on Unsplash

Featuring works by Sara Danius, Yukiko Duke, Jörgen Gassilewski, Linda Jones, Sven Olov Karlsson, Ellen Nordmark, Lida Starodubtseva and more.

29/01/2025

Ulricha Johnson, Managing Director at The Swedish Performing Arts Coalition, discusses the country's performing arts ecosystem, and some of SPAC’s many initiatives to help foster its development. Interviewed by SBR Editor Alex Fleming.

An interview with Ulricha Johnson of The Swedish Performing Arts Coalition

26/01/2025

In this issue's Features section, playwright, translator and author Ann Henning Jocelyn reflects upon a career translating for the page and stage alike, including what it means to go 'beyond words' in a translation.

Playwright, translator and author Ann Henning Jocelyn reflects upon a career translating for the page and stage alike.

16/01/2025

"I do understand it’s daft talking to an elevator, I do understand that."

🛗

From 'My Elevator Days' by Bengt Ahlfors, translated by Henning Koch in our latest issue.

"In the wake of the untimely death of his dog Kafka, the elderly protagonist in Bengt Ahlfors’s gentle, bittersweet monologue finds himself turning to his building’s lift, ‘Enok’, for companionship. In this expansive, delightfully digressive piece, Ahlfors weaves the story of an entire life – one lived in the same apartment building – into a lonely man’s unconventional search for connection." - Henning Koch for SBR.

Read the full extract here:

by Bengt Ahlfors, translated by Henning Koch

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