Stellar review in Norrländska socialdemokraten for Alakoski’s Cotton Angel

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Susanna Alakoski‘s novel Cotton Angel was published last month and is to be reviewed on Thursday. However, it has already received some fantastic pre-reviews. In Norrländska socialdemokraten we can read: Masterpiece about women who have been silenced […] Susanna Alakoski uses every word that fits in the work at the farm, all the tiresome labour that is demanded and every feeling that is hidden in the persons to give us a story that throbs, stings and aches. […] The tears are falling when I read Susanna Alakoski’s precise prose where she describes her grandmother’s life. Her musical story fills the empty space that has existed until now.

Susanna Alakoski


Another raving review for Sem-Sandberg’s W

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Steve Sem-Sandberg’s latest novel W was published in Sweden the 19th of September. It has received another great review, this time in Svenska Dagbladet.

It’s not a book that offers comprehension, but something bigger: a feeling of solidarity. […] One could call Steve Sem-Sandberg’s W for a masterly psychological case study – it wouldn’t be wrong – but it would in some way also to be reducing this novel, to make it something too general. No, it’s the collaboration and tension between the reader and Woyzeck, rather than the attempts to find more profound motives, that makes this reading experience so strong. 

You walk by his side with a feeling of solidarity, not comprehension. You are led to the scaffold without having gotten any proper answer on the question about the nature of the crime, if it was in the heat of the moment or the revenge for an entire life of injustices. And when you are closing the book it’s as if the broadaxe falls down a second time.


Raving review for Steve Sem-Sandberg’s W in Dagens Nyheter

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Hanna Nordenhök has in Dagens Nyheter written a fantastic review for Steve Sem-Sandberg‘s novel W. You can read the review in its entirety here.

Steve Sem-Sandberg’s new novel W shines from within, as from a thousand small inexorable lamps directed into the most acute. […] a sharp and hyper sensitive novel about abandonment and violence. […] it sparks electrically from this art of novel sharp in style. […] Steve Sem-Sandberg has with W written a close study in human exposure and male rage. To read it is like to crossing the surface, gasping, and greedily devour the air that only really good literature can bring. It’s a fantastic, spell-binding and terrible book.

W is published today, 19th of September, by Albert Bonniers förlag.

There will be a second season of Saga-sagor!

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SUSANNA ALAKOSKI IS BACK WITH AN EPIC QUARTET

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Susanna Alakoski’s highly anticipated novel Cotton Angel is finally here!

Cotton Angel the first novel in a quartet, published by Natur & Kultur, in which we will follow four generations of women – mothers and daughters in both Finland and Sweden. It’s a story about the history of working class women and about the journey a lot of families took to ensure their own survival.

Cotton Angel, tells the story of Hilda, who as a young framer’s daughter gets thrown out by her family for getting pregnant out of wedlock. Hilda has to work hard as a maid on another fram, not far from where she grew up. The cotton becomes the way out, simultaneously a blessing and a new shackle.

Cotton Angel is a powerful novel about the exposure girls endure, female friendship and the constant thirst for knowledge, a story about how the time that we live in can determine our lives far more than the choices we are able to make.

Stieg Larsson’s Archive by Jan Stocklassa #1 at Amazon when pre-launched in USA

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We are happy to share the news that Jan Stocklassa’s Stieg Larsson’s Archive was pre-launched on Sunday in the US and immediately hit the number 1 spot at the Amazon Best Sellers list for True Crime Biographies (as the first Swedish book ever). It also went straight to #4 at Amazon Best Sellers list for all genres. A great start for Amazon’s upcoming publication of Stieg Larsson’s Archive on October 1st.

  • Amazon Best Sellers

Steve Sem-Sandberg’s The Tempest published in France

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Today, August 22nd, is the publication day for the French edition of The Tempest by Steve Sem-Sandberg. Lettres de la pluie is a part of La Rentrée Littéraire for the publisher Robert Laffont.

Steve Sem-Sandberg’s The Tempest is a hypnotic tale of an island, overrun with stories and myths. The Tempest portrays a hatefulness that is inherited generation after generation and a love that will conquer all.

This is a novel about the way historical crimes are written on a landscape, about the manner in which moral decay takes on physical form. What makes The Tempest truly special, though, is the risks that Sem-Sandberg takes with narrative conventions, the way that his prose seems to break every rule in the creative writing handbook, and yet does so joyfully, recklessly and utterly convincingly. That such stylistic complexity is rendered in a manner that feels entirely natural is testimony to the great skill of the translator, Anna Paterson. The prose leaps wilfully between past and present tenses, the voice suddenly breaks into the second person and at one point Johannes takes over Andreas’s first-person narrative. Perspectives telescope in and out, giving us sweeping passages of history or wide-angle landscapes followed by intimately observed and close-up moments in time. It’s as if the book’s most significant borrowing from Shakespeare’s play is not the island setting, but rather Prospero’s total control of narrative, the omnipotence of the author-magician.
The Spectator