New Swedish Books, spring 2017 1
33 Spring 2017 “ The relationships between childr
en and adults are complex and unconventional. A nine-year-old falls in love with her friend’s dad; a teenage boy is drawn to his dead grandfather’s lover” territory of both dialect and lyricism, she has created a luxuriant, vivid prose style, with powerful images and unique humour. As the Katapultpriset jury emphasised in their statement about the winning book, Stoor is concerned with ‘crafting short stories that centre on the child’s gaze’. Her fidelity to that gaze creates a distinctive world in which the child’s values are definitive. Frogs found in the undergrowth can become princes, smooth and beautiful (‘Prince-Plash-Into-Your-Heart, like. Kind of sudden, a creature of paradise.’) – and therefore a suitable gift to wrap in Christmas wrapping paper and take along to someone’s birthday party. The relationships between children and adults are complex and unconventional. A nine-year-old falls in love with her friend’s dad; a teenage boy is drawn to his dead grandfather’s lover. Parents are seldom how they ought to be – when mum is tired, a young arm might end up covered in bruises – but there is also a raw, straightforward love for negligent fathers, worn-out mothers and dippy older sisters with spotty backs. Nordic Quality The stated aim of Nordiska rådets litteraturpris (the Nordic Council Literature Prize), which has been awarded since 1962, is to ‘foster interest in the literature and language of the neighbouring countries, and for common Nordic culture’. The Nordic Council appoints an adjudication committee, on which each Nordic country is represented by two people. The task of the committee is both to nominate works for the prize, and to choose a winner. Past winners include many internationally renowned authors. Beyond his home nation of Norway, Jon Fosse is primarily known for his Beckett-esque drama, but it was for his lyrically dense prose that he was awarded the Nordic Council Literature Prize in 2015. His short, yet intimate Trilogien (Trilogy) explores the consequences of art and love in two people’s lives, taking inspiration from both the gospels and Christian mysticism. The previous year’s prize went to a more traditional artist of the novel form: the Finland-Swedish author Kjell Westö and his Hägring 38 (Mirage 38), set in the thirties – a time marked by both the coming war and the past one. Westö’s fiction is not only inspired by historic events, it also discusses how history is written: whose truth will persist? In 2016, the Nordic Council Literature Prize went to one of Sweden’s foremost poets, Swedish Academy member Katarina Frostenson, for her poetry collection Sånger och formler (Songs and Formulas). ‘In a web of contemporary times and mythology, of familiar sights and global visions, the down-to-earth and journeys into memory, literature and song, she pinpoints the detail in the bigger picture.’ wrote the adjudicating committee in their statement, which also highlighted Frostenson’s ‘long and complex body of work in the lyric form’. In Sånger och formler, the reader meets a poet who, in spite of her own sense of being out of time, still chooses to see and depict that time. She seeks a way of relating to its pressure points, from far-away wars to beggars on the street. But something as prosaic as an iPhone cable can find space in her poem: ‘so sorrowful it seems, with the cut across its cheek / / the white line where speech runs out’. Instead of faces ‘sucked into their headphones’ sound’, the poet wishes for ‘letters, fingertips / and eyes that are opened on meeting’. Many of the poems are searching for such meetings that surpass time and space. The topic might be Ovidius, someone’s dead mother, or two siblings walking through a Siberian forest after an aeroplane accident. Katarina Frostenson’s poetry has had a major influence on a younger generation of Swedish poets. It is sonorous, spellbinding and complex. And it stays with its readers like a scar. Of course authors must be rewarded. Of course it’s also impossible to rank books in this way. No jury can fairly award a Swedish or a Nordic gold medal in literature. But after many meetings and thousands of hours’ reading, they can at least present this: the year’s most carefully thought-out book tips.