New Swedish Voices 1
Johanne Lykke Naderehvandi (b. 1987) A vague sens
e of threat pervades Red Sun (‘Röd sol’), the latest novel from Johanne Lykke (Holm) Naderehvandi. Red Sun tells the story of a couple, India and Kallas, who live in an unnamed city. They leave the city to visit a friend at the coast (in another unnamed town). When three children turn up out of nowhere after an accident, the story grows increasingly stranger. The sense of threat dwells in the language itself, which constantly verges on the surreal. It is reinforced by the strange events that keep happening: a forest fire, an out-of-control argument, a fistfight. Not to mention the children, appearing from out of the blue. What happens to children who don’t want their Red Sun 312 p., 2023, Albert Bonniers Rights: RCW Literary Agency Rights sold to: Denmark India and Kallas are invited to stay at a friend’s large house by the sea. One evening three children appear with nowhere to go. India and Kallas become attached to the children. They begin to indulge in the kind of love and care usually reserved for parents. Meanwhile, the shadow of the inevitable creeps closer. Strega 200 p., 2020, Albert Bonniers Rights: RCW Literary Agency Rights sold to: Bulgaria, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Macedonia, Netherlands, Poland, Turkey, UK, US/Canada Powerfully inventive and atmospheric, Strega is a modern gothic story about nine young women on the cusp of inheriting society’s submission to violence, and the age-old myths that uphold it. parents, or children who have no parents at all? These questions confront India and Kallas, whose own relationship also becomes more visible after the children appear. They love each other very much, but the dynamic between them is uneasy. Like the oppressive heat and the smoke from the hillside fires, Kallas’ fits of rage and India’s passivity come to feel smothering. A vague unease also drives the narrative in Lykke Naderehvandi’s previous novel, Strega. Nine young women are supposed to be seasonal workers at a hotel in the Italian village of Strega, but no guests come. Life takes on an increasingly surreal tinge, turning to terror when one night, during a party at the hotel, one of the women disappears without a trace. As women, all nine know the constant danger of violent death. That awareness and the fear it instils braids together their fates until they almost become one. Naderehvandi has a striking ability to weave together language and events that suck readers in and force them into a state of unease – a state that, paradoxically, we don’t wish to leave. Saga Wallander New Swedish Voices 8 Foto: David Möller