For a few weeks now, the stacks of review books that have been received by publishers have been noticeably modest. It’s an old tradition that most people believe has something to do with book sales. I’m having a little trouble seeing causality; It’s hard to imagine that in February, everyone in the book industry and everyone involved, from publishers and authors to the guys in the print shop outside Tallinn, would be loading up pallets with last year’s cookbooks and special editions of Love Poems Through the Ages for the ladies and Hemingway for the men, printed on recycled toilet paper, to be transported on to the bookstores.
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Gone are the days of queuing at midnight to rush in and grab a copy of a rarity (Roger Fjellström’s beautiful editions of Henri Michaux’s interpretations are particularly remembered). But I’ve compiled all of my sales anecdotes before, so you don’t have to. Aside from that, I think the final book publication before it goes on sale is pure icing on the cake. Who buys a new and expensive book when you can opt for a cheap old one instead?
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New and old at the same time is Katarina Frostenson’s translation of Marguerite Dura’s “Everyday Things”, which Ellerströms is publishing today with a newly written foreword by Frostenson. The first Swedish edition was published in 1989, a year after the French original. It is a wonderful collection of reflections on writing by Dura and others, as well as sitting and watching the ladies or the sea (“The word ‘ladies’ means nothing if you haven’t experienced the ladies on the English Channel).
Duras is a writer who is difficult to characterize. It’s hard to put into words why she’s so good. For example, when she finishes the introductory text to her book “Summer – 80”. She writes succinctly: “‘Summer – 80’ is the only diary of my life. The one about my decline by the sea in the bad summer of 1980.” It’s stuck with me since I first read it, and since then I’ve automatically referred to all summers of the ’80s as “the bad summer.”
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It is a book whose texts are based on MD’s conversation with a good friend. It reminds me of searching for 30 years for a copy of the double LP Fruit of the Original Sin – an enigmatic anthology record that touches on Duras a bit. Among other things, there is a monologue here that I believe is a long interview answer. If you listen you can smell the cigarette smoke in the room.
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A recent line that has stuck with me is from Samantha Harvey, who, in the dizzying novel Omloppsbanor (translated by Evas Åsefeldt for Modernista), describes a very old Japanese woman “cultivating her solitude” on an island: “She hears a cicada, you never used to hear cicadas this late in the year, but these days it’s so hot that they don’t know when they’re going to die.” In six months I’ll mutter that it’s so hot you don’t know when you’re going to die. Reading is a mutual integration.
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Read previous newsletters about books.
1. Samanta Schweblin: “The Good Evil”
Trans. Annakarin Thorburn. The Crane, 240 pages (1)
Six new, masterfully disturbing and compressed short stories from the Argentine author.
2. Ingela Strandberg: “Under the Lakes”
Norstedts, 76 pages (2)
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 (4)
The Stadsteatern in Malmö is the setting for this novel about coming to terms with a childhood tragedy.
5. Hannele Mikaela Taivassalo: “InSanatorium”
Publisher, 180 pages (10)
Strange and poetic novel about people in a hotel between dreams and reality.
6. 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.
7. Soraya Bay: “The Horn of Abundance”
Wahlström & Widstrand, 194 pages (7)
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 (8)
Essay book that writes the history of biography in a courageous and exciting way.
9. Kamel Daoud: “The Scar”
Trans. Ulla Bruncrona. The Crane, 444 pages (6)
Award-winning and controversial novel about the bloody civil war in Algeria from 1992 to 2002.
10. Marguerite Yourcenar: “Ah, my beau château”
Trans. Kajsa Andersson. Ellerströms, 80 pages (9)
The French mistress’s long essay about the history of power struggles and scandalous parties at Château Chenonceaux.
Elect ten DN critics
The review list includes books published after November 28th. 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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