VERA

”Vera” is reminiscent of Ingmar Bergman’s austere existential dramas set in high society and in barren coastal landscapes /… / Anne Swärd is one of Sweden’s most compelling contemporary authors.
Arbetarbladet

Anne Swärd is a divinely gifted storyteller and a novelist of great European significance. Without a hint of hesitation she writes a beautiful and grand prose that evokes one image after the other and that unfolds like a Günter Grass novel towards a world that is at once childishly accurate and ingeniously wicked.
Göteborgs-Posten

Her style is grand and epic, luminous and plot-driven and she unabashedly uses great emotional expressions /… / a bewitching fairy-tale.
Dagens Nyheter

Anne Swärd’s web – full of secrets, lies and mysteries – is so intricate and astonishing, a genuine page-turner with just as much poetic finesse as terrifying events /… / Swärd’s book is everything but black and white, it’s rather blue like the sea. The sea as beautiful, like ice, as cold, like enigmatic, alluring and frightening /… / With “Vera”, Anne Swärd has written a both menacing and poetically perfect novel.
Expressen

Anne Swärd’s novels always have a magnificent tone, written with a strong sense of atmosphere and an eloquent narrative – it’s almost like a beautiful painting by Danish artist Vilhelm Hammershöi, foreboding secrets on the other side of the door, and when I describe ”Vera” it resembles an evil fairy tale, illusively characterised as a Captain Bluebeard with an incarcerated woman.
Sveriges Television Kulturnyheterna

Anne Swärd evokes the dark story with a remarkably powerful and convincing prose that is occasionally painful to read.
Gefle Dagblad

A majestic and astonishing novel.
Kristianstadsbladet

An extraordinarily good novel /… / She is an epic storyteller.
Gomorron Sverige

The main character is an encapsulated princess and the people around her symbols and shadows, either good or bad. So in a near future I will probably believe this was something I read a very long time ago. It may well be what we call timeless.
Sveriges Radio Kulturnytt

The scenes are dramatic. A wedding party in the depths of midwinter, which is interrupted by a blizzard, a village at the top of a mountain that no roads lead to, a larch forest, an aristocratic apartment with sombre velvet curtains, silk noil nightgowns and an inertia-like slumber induced by powder white opiates /… / “Vera” is a powerful story that does not leave me unaffected.
Svenska Dagbladet

… a multi-faceted, vivid novel /… / Anne Swärd’s prose awakens strong emotions inside of me.
Jönköpings-Posten

Anne Swärd has a peculiar flair for making stories come alive and for delving deep under the surface in a way that is not always comfortable, but very poignant and fascinating / … / Circumstances are shrouded in mystery. Everything is illusive and implicit. Still there is a sense of fervor and presence in the prose, which keeps me eagerly hooked.
Skånska Dagbladet

“Vera” is an expertly written story; poetic, dramatic and surprising. Sometimes it reminds me of a fairy-tale.
A Room of My Own (blog)

This is a novel with ingredients such as escape, betrayal, abuse, love and lies. Swärd has a gift for describing events with small nuances that don’t mean much, but at the same mean everything. As a reader you are pulled into the subdued, paralyzing mood, unable to let go.
Just nu, just här (blog)

“Vera” is a grand, epic story of loneliness, flight and dissolution. And perhaps of survival. The prose is flawless – the best I have read in a long time – as is the plotting. There isn’t a false note anywhere.
Bokhållaren (blog)

I am (yet again) impressed by Anne Swärd’s luminous prose. It is pure, atmospheric and full of shrewd and beautiful metaphors.
Bokcafé Pilgatan (blog)