New Swedish Books, autumn 2020 1
New Swedish Books 48 Troubled Water The jury: Her
distinctive language underpins an increasingly thickening plot. There lies Nilas, hidden under the moss, crystalline frost covering his cheeks. By treacherous moorland and rapid forest streams, at the same spot where Hebbe had died. Everyone believes that Nilas has drowned, that the Vindel River has swallowed him. Several decades will pass before the spring floods reveal what really happened. Troubled Water is an evocative and psychologically charged novel that revolves around an unexplained disappearance. It portrays an isolated rural community through the small-scale agriculture of the 1940s and the emerging welfare state of the 1960s into the post-industrial shadow of today. But more than anything it is a story about a boy who longs for a father, about a young man who falls in love with someone he cannot have and about a woman who does not know how to be a mother. With a masterful hand, revealing the poignant details little by little, Maria Broberg shows how secrets, shame, guilt, misunderstandings and prejudice can alter the course of a man’s life – with fateful consequences. Maria Broberg’s gripping debut carries on the tradition of some of Sweden’s greatest storytellers and promises much more to come. Maria Broberg Novel, 272 p. Maria Broberg Publisher Norstedts Rights Norstedts Agency Sofia Odsberg sofia.odsberg@norstedts.se Rights sold to Germany/Nagel & Kimche Photo: Andreas Nilsson