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2023 Longlist

The Antarctica of Love

Translated from the original Swedish by Deborah Bragan-Turner

ABOUT
THE BOOK

Inni lives her life on the margins, but it is a life that is full and complex, filled with different shades of dark and light… Until she is brutally murdered one summer’s day, on a lake shore at the heart of a distant, rain-washed forest. On the surface, this is the story of the moment her life is violently extinguished, but it is also about the time before, and about the lives that carry on afterwards. It’s about her children, her parents, her childhood of neglect, her volatile adolescence, and the chain of choices, tragedies and accidents that lead her to a life on the streets and take her into the wrong crowd, the wrong places and, finally, the wrong car with the wrong person. Sara Stridsberg’s new novel is about absolute vulnerability, brutality and isolation. A devastating story of unexpected love, tenderness and light in the total darkness.

 

ABOUT
THE AUTHOR Sara
Stridsberg

Sara Stridsberg is a writer, playwright and former member of the Swedish Academy. Her first novel Happy Sally was published in 2004, and her breakthrough came two years later with the publication of The Faculty of Dreams, her second novel, which was longlisted for the International Booker Prize in 2019. Her novels have been translated into more than 25 languages, and she has been shortlisted for the prestigious August Prize on multiple occasions, including in 2012 for her collection Medealand and Other Plays. She lives in Stockholm.

Sara Stridsberg is a writer, playwright and former member of the Swedish Academy. Her first novel Happy Sally was published in 2004, and her breakthrough came two years later with the publication of The Faculty of Dreams, her second novel, which was longlisted for the International Booker Prize in 2019. Her novels have been translated into more than 25 languages, and she has been shortlisted for the prestigious August Prize on multiple occasions, including in 2012 for her collection Medealand and Other Plays. She lives in Stockholm.

NOMINATING LIBRARY COMMENTS

Inni, a prostitute and drug addict, is brutally murdered in a forest. From the realm of the dead, she recounts her broken life. Rhythmically, her story returns to the end point of her existence, when the Hunter has ushered her into his car for a final journey. Carried by a powerful and poetic writing, this book sublimates the unbearable.

Bibliothèque Municipale de Reims, France

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

Date published
14/08/2018
Country
Sweden
Publisher
MacLehose Press
Translator
Deborah Bragan-Turner
Translation
Translated from the original Swedish by Deborah Bragan-Turner

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