Swedish Contemporary Fiction 1
Sara Stridsberg (b. 1972) Like many other writers
of her generation, Sara Stridsberg has written a number of works for the theatre. Adapting drama to prose (and vice versa) has allowed her to approach her subject matter from different angles. And what subjects does she deal with? Feminism, outsiders and mental illness – all of which are present in The Faculty of Dreams (‘Drömfakulteten’), the novel that marked her arrival on the scene in 2006. If anyone embodies feminism, outsiderdom and mental illness, it must be Valerie Solanas. She was the American who wrote the radical feminist ‘SCUM Manifesto’ in 1967 and is best known as the person who shot Andy Warhol and a journalist in Warhol’s studio that same year. The Faculty of Dreams is a fantasy centred on a shattered life. In it, Valerie Solanas explains herself to a psychiatrist, a friend, her publisher, the author Sara Stridsberg … Sometimes it takes the form of a dramatic dialogue; sometimes it looks back on a traumatic life. Sara Stridsberg also translated Solanas’ manifesto into Swedish a few years before the publication of The Faculty of Dreams. Stridsberg frequently enlists fictional or quasifictional women in her works. Some of them include Medea, Dolores Haze (Lolita in Vladimir Nabokov’s notorious novel of the same name) and Sweden’s Queen Christina. In 2018, Sara Stridsberg resigned from her seat in the Swedish Academy exactly two years after her election. She was one of several members to resign in reaction to the Academy’s handling of the #MeToo scandal that shook literary Sweden. The scandal and its consequences have led at least five prominent Swedish writers to include an elaborate tale of a strange organisation with mysterious rites and rituals in their recent literary works. One such book is Stridberg’s latest book, a short-story collection entitled Hunter in Huskvarna (‘Hunter i Huskvarna’, 2021). There can be no doubt which organisation is meant. Yet again, Stridsberg’s new volume of stories demonstrates her sensitive touch and her enormous range, extending from myth to realism, from measured rhythm to free flight. Jonas Thente Rights sold to: 27 countries (until 2021 handled by Hedlund Agency) 19 The Antarctica of Love 313 p. 2019, Albert Bonniers Rights: RCW Literary Agency 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. 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. The Gravity of Love: Ode to my Family 355 p. 2014, Albert Bonniers Rights: RCW Literary Agency When Jimmie is admitted to Beckomberga psychiatric hospital outside Stockholm, his daughter Jackie starts spending increasing amounts of time there, and when her mother leaves for a holiday by the Black Sea, the hospital becomes Jackie’s whole world. The Faculty of Dreams, 364 p. 2006, Albert Bonniers Rights: RCW Literary Agency In this novel’s fictitious background story, the author visits Valerie Solanas at the end of her life in the hotel in a red-light district in San Francisco where Solanas was residing when she died in April 1988. Sara Stridsberg mixes documentary material and fiction in feverishly vibrant prose. Swedish Contemporary Fiction Foto: Thron Ullberg