Hash
ABOUT
THE BOOK
Setting out in 1947 from a small village where an epidemic of tuberculosis rages, Robert Maser, a travelling garment salesman who may or may not be the fugitive Nazi Martin Bormann, and the local school-teacher, Lars, embark on a bizarre quest to find the world’s best Swedish hash – a culinary marvel whipped up from an assortment of grains and entrails and renowned among the peasants for its delectability and restorative powers.
Their adventures are narrated from the present in a faux-naif style by a 107-year-old newspaper reporter, who was witness to the events and has waited until now to confront his own relationship to life and death, happiness and suffering, and the power of art to express life’s ambiguities.
ABOUT
THE TRANSLATOR Tom
Geddes
Tom Geddes was the founding secretary-treasurer of SELTA and for some years also its chair. At the end of 2019 he stood down from 36 years on the editorial board of Swedish Book Review. He won the inaugural Bernard Shaw Prize for Swedish Translation in 1991 and was awarded a Swedish Academy translation prize in 2002. He also received the Royal Order of the Polar Star in 1992, with Joan Tate and Laurie Thompson, and was elevated to Commander of the same order in 2006, an honour he regards as much as an accolade to SELTA for its 25th anniversary as to himself.
Tom Geddes was the founding secretary-treasurer of SELTA and for some years also its chair. At the end of 2019 he stood down from 36 years on the editorial board of Swedish Book Review. He won the inaugural Bernard Shaw Prize for Swedish Translation in 1991 and was awarded a Swedish Academy translation prize in 2002. He also received the Royal Order of the Polar Star in 1992, with Joan Tate and Laurie Thompson, and was elevated to Commander of the same order in 2006, an honour he regards as much as an accolade to SELTA for its 25th anniversary as to himself.