New Swedish Books, Autumn 2017 1
33 Autumn 2017 Evin Ahmad (b. 1990) One Day I Wil
l Build a Castle Out of Money Publisher Natur & Kultur www.nok.se Rights Partners in Stories henrik@partnersinstories.se One Day I Will Build a Castle Out of Money Evin Ahmad is an actor and One Day I Will Build a Castle Out of Money is her literary debut. It’s an intense story of one woman’s class journey, about going from one environment to another. The narrator is a young woman from a Kurdish immigrant family living in the Stockholm suburb of Akalla. You can really feel her presence in the writing, with its fast-paced rhythm and voice akin to rap. She writes about family and friends, her dad, mum, siblings, school, the city, and the suburbs. In compact chapters the reader watches her dreams and her will to do something different develop and break through. Class journeys are complex affairs for those who make them – marked by feelings of guilt and inferiority, a desire for self-promotion, tempered with a drive to keep out of sight. There’s a constant sense of a cultural and economical deficit, and a life under those circumstances is very demanding. Photo: Johan Bergmark