Stellar review in Norrländska socialdemokraten for Alakoski’s Cotton Angel

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

Steve Sem-Sandberg’s latest novel 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 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

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.

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