New Swedish Books, autumn 2019 1
37 Autumn 2019 Henrik Bromander (b. 1982) Shahid/
Shards graphic novel, 420 p. Publisher Galago www.galago.se Rights Am-book Alessandra Sternfeld alessandra@am-book.com Selected works Smålands mörker, graphic novel, 2012 Kurs i självutplåning, graphic novel, 2015 Riv alla tempel, novel 2014 Högspänning, novel, 2019 Awards Seriefrämjandets Urhunden 2013 Shahid/Shards Henrik Bromander’s new graphic novel Shahid/Shards is what is known as flip cover, a book with two front covers and two stories that meet in the middle. Shards follows Lovisa who, despite growing up in an un cultured family in Skåne, decides to move to Stockholm and pursue a career in art. She finds a cultured, middle-class boyfriend, but can’t rid herself from the darkness of her childhood and her own fantasies of violence. In Shahid, we follow Håkan, a football hooligan from the Gothenburg suburb of Tynnered, who converts to Islam following a life of abuse and incarceration. However it is not long before his new faith turns into fanaticism and he and a childhood friend travel to Syria to become ISIS soldiers. If the post-apocalyptic genre depicts struggle for survival in a post-disaster world, then Henrik Bromander’s book might be called pre-apocalyptic. Shahid/Shards is saturated with a sense of impending doom. The lives of Håkan and Lovisa are both characterised by violence and an increasingly powerful death drive, a spiral staircase down into the darkest depths of humanity, which comes to a literally explosive culmination in the centre spread of the book. Photo: Mario Phrat