New Swedish Books, Autumn 2018 1
63 Autumn 2018 Ingelin Angerborn (b. 1966) House
of Shadows Publisher Rabén & Sjögren www.rabensjogren.se Rights Rabén & Sjögren Agency Åsa Bergman asa.bergman@rabensjogren.se Selected Works Gengångaren 2015 Rum 213 2011 Hjärtslag och hjärnsläpp 2008 Selected Literary Prizes Tidens förlags barnbokspris 2002 House of Shadows The aim of the horror genre is to make the reader uncomfortable. One way of doing this is by using and describing different types of media – art, photography, sound recordings, and film – in order to create a multi-layered fiction. The reader, and often the central characters too, then have to navigate between these in order to solve the mystery, at the same time as constantly questioning what it is they’re looking at. Ingelin Angerborn is a master of this kind of cross-disciplinary layering. Here she offers us a story that unsettles the reader over and over again with dizzying effect, practically from the first page. Sakarias has to spend his autumn break with his paternal grandparents. In the stairwell of their house, hung with weird old paintings, he’s already struck by a mysterious optical illusion – maybe because the lights suddenly went out. And his phone has captured a strange image. When Grandma wants him to join a drawing class, with the theme of supernatural creatures, the unnerving impressions begin to escalate. Delightfully disturbing. Photo: Ingelin Angerborn