It’s starting to become a trend. Or at least a tendency. On the shelf for new arrivals are two collections of Swedish short stories. These are “Your New Zodiac Sign” by Jonas Karlsson and “The Guests” by Martin Kalin. The former is a lazy short story writer with several collections behind him and now one in front of him. The latter is a debutant and seems promising. The first short story is called “The Mandarin Spirit” and it takes strange paths in an interesting way. A short story that contains an outlandish phrase like “My loneliness vibrated.” makes me want to figure out what comes before and what comes after.
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Two authors recently debuted collections of short stories. Ellika Lagerlöf with “The last castrate” and Soraya Bay with “Ymnighetshornet”. The latter, like the former, is currently on the critics’ list. It is therefore time to analyze the phenomenon of short story debuts, as Saga Cavallin has done for example in this magazine. Because it’s an old publishing truth that short stories don’t sell and absolutely is not something to debut with.
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I remember the last time it happened. During a few years in the 1990s and early 2000s, Cecilia Davidsson, Stefan Lindberg, Hans Gunnarsson, Jerker Virdborg, Mats Kolmisoppi, Alejandro Leiva Wenger, Ninni Holmqvist, Mats Kempe, Oline Stig and several others debuted short story collections. If you think about it, it’s actually the case that the authors who debut with a collection of short stories go on to greatness more often than those who debut novels. Maybe the publishers have finally discovered it.
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When the short story craze was last discussed, I remember my point that a fragmented world needed short stories rather than novels to describe it. Fragmented world. Around the year 2000. Yes, Tjena. Then again, perhaps the world was more fragmented back then, when everything felt open and perhaps even hopeful, rather than the way it is today: a shambles.
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If you want to get to the bottom of Swedish short stories this weekend, you should check out the 2018 anthology “Svenska noveller från Almqvist till Stoor” selected by Ingrid Elam and the aforementioned Jerker Virdborg. There are valuable gems here and I hope for a sequel or expanded edition in ten years.
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From Norway we hear how the Norwegian Bonniers launched a test balloon by replacing a children’s book illustrator with an AI illustrator. Artists rage. The thoughts revolve around a series of social media pranks responding to a newspaper article asking why the “left” (read humanists) are not interested in new technologies (read AI).
The answers don’t take long to arrive. “Left” means that they are definitely interested in new technologies, such as curing cancer, developing ecological energy sources, cooling the planet, reducing social divides, and the like. One of the interviewees gave a shorter answer when asked which technology he was passionate about: the guillotine.
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As if by chance, a collection of short stories has swapped the top spot with the long-standing Ingela Strandberg on this week’s critics’ list. Argentina’s Samanta Schweblin is the form’s most revered international name since Raymond Carver. To Mats Almegård from DN, who recently met her in Berlin, where she lives, she says: “Short story writers are the chess players of fiction.” There are only a few who board.
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Read previous newsletters about books.
1. Samanta Schweblin: “The Good Evil”
Trans. Annakarin Thorburn. The Crane, 240 pages (2)
Six new, masterfully disturbing and compressed short stories from the Argentine author.
2. Ingela Strandberg: “Under the Lakes”
Norstedts, 76 pages (1)
The new collection reminds us that it is possible to go beyond hackneyed phrases and write poems about life, death and love.
3. Torborg Nedreaas: “Nothing grows from moonlight”
Trans. Cilla Naumann. Wahlström & Widstrand, 288 pages (3)
Norwegian classic novel from 1947 about the abortion ban and the renewed attention to moralism.
4. Johanne Lykke Naderehvandi: “Smoke and Mirrors”
Albert Bonniers Verlag, 302 pages (new)
The Stadsteatern in Malmö is the setting for this novel about coming to terms with a childhood tragedy.
5. Sofia Andruchovych: “Amadoka II. Sofia”
Trans. Nils Håkanson. Albert Bonniers Verlag, 507 pages (5)
The second part of this rich epic deals with the Bolshevik terror in Ukraine.
6. Kamel Daoud: “The Scar”
Trans. Ulla Bruncrona. The Crane, 444 pages (7)
Award-winning and controversial novel about the bloody civil war in Algeria from 1992 to 2002.
7. Soraya Bay: “The Horn of Abundance”
Wahlström & Widstrand, 194 pages (8)
Six insightful short stories in a debut collection about women, bodies, class differences and humiliation.
8. Ingrid Elam: “Reading life. The biography, a life drawing”
Nature & Culture, 220 pages (6)
Essay book that writes the history of biography in a courageous and exciting way.
9. Marguerite Yourcenar: “Ah, my beau château”
Trans. Kajsa Andersson. Ellerströms, 80 pages (4)
The French mistress’s long essay about the history of power struggles and scandalous parties at Château Chenonceaux.
10. Hannele Mikaela Taivassalo: “InSanatorium”
The publisher, 180 pages (10)
Strange and poetic novel about people in a hotel between dreams and reality.
Elect ten DN critics
The Critics’ List includes books published after November 20th. Last week’s rankings are shown in parentheses. The DN critics Åsa Beckman, Jan Eklund, Johanna Käck, Rebecka Kärde, Kristina Lindquist, Maria Schottenius, Greta Schüldt, Jonas Thente, Malin Ullgren and Gabriel Zetterström vote on the list. All reviews can be read at dn.se/kultur
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