DN’s critics choose the most interesting books right now
Just until May 1, a class issue will appear. In recent months I have encountered 9C in at least three different novels. Empirin is limping, but I wonder in how many other books (including decks and youth books) just 9C is the class in which the main character or its kid goes. It feels just neutral with 9C. 9A feels sloppy and if it is 9f then the school is too big for the intrigue. I don’t remember straight arm, but I think I went in 9c. Maybe we have all done it when we think about it.
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A significant American poet died this week. I took a beer with David Thomas a few years ago, after a concert with his band Pere Ubu. Which writers inspire him? I don’t read, he replied. Yet he is one of those who best portrays the American loneliness where it runs along a highway in the wolf hour with night radio as the only company. Few things grab me as this desolate yet trusting verse from the song « Slow walking daddy » on the album « St. Arkansas » from 2002:
Six Miles South of Meadville, All Bare Cinderblocks
Sitting there is moose lodge 2505
And outside there’s a sign that say
« Good Cod Dinner, Fridays, $ 5.95 »
« Good Steakeye Dinner, Saturdays, $ 5.95 »
And it says: « Welcome! »
You are welcome …
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Pere Ubu Yes. The name is of course taken from Alfred Jarry’s scandal success « Ubu Roi » from 1896. The play begins with the exclamation More! (In Sture Pyks Swedish translation it becomes The ass!) which caused the resurrection of the premiere audience in Paris. Afterwards, some suspected that those who bounced and threw things at the stage were actually hired by the playwright. It is not at all incredible.
Incredible, on the other hand, is the title figure itself. King Ubu is a fatty, narcissistic, bloodthirsty, absurd, uneducated and immensely vulgar ruler who creates death and destruction where he goes. Absolutely impossible to imagine in real life. Is he.
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The Mårbacka Foundation has been given a new chairman, they announce in a press release. Selma Lagerlöf’s old home feels typically newly renovated when I read:
– I am not an expert on Selma Lagerlöf, do not believe it, but with my cultural policy experience and knowledge I hope to be able to broaden and strengthen the board’s competence and contribute to Mårbacka’s development.
Ulf Nordström has been head of culture in Region Värmland and is a well -known face on the Warmland cultural scene.
– I’ve read a lot of Selma Lagerlöf …
Adequate. I wish them good luck.
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Another warm-up is Göran Tunström (1937-2000). In Easter week, I sat down and read in the yard when Tunström’s brother, the neighbor, came by and threatened that I would soon have something thicker to read. Today it steamed down: the third warm -up Lars Andersson’s biography of friend Göran. 862 pages are it. He once wrote that he carried Selma Lagerlöf on his back and denied her three times. It was in the project « The Writers’ Literature History » where writers wrote about other writers. It is a project that should be revived in our time, and which Andersson can be said to have contributed to the book « Göran Tunström. Attempts with a life » at the publisher Polaris.
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1. Fredrik Sjöberg: « Bruno Liljefors. A biography »
Albert Bonnier’s publisher, 387 pages (1)
Entertaining biography that captures the entire extent of the artist’s messy life and deed.
2. Isabella Nilsson: « Emptiness and tenderness »
Empire, 160 pages (2)
Hundreds of short texts about loneliness, writing, reading and impossible reality.
3. Daniel Kehlmann: « Light play »
Overs. Jesper Festin, Albert Bonnier’s publisher, 368 pages (4)
Slapstick and tragic alternate in the novel about German film director Georg Wilhelm Pabst during Nazism.
4. Hanna Johansson: « Body Double »
Norstedts, 205 pages (3)
Enigmatic, thriller -like novel that artificially plants uncertainty in the reader.
5. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: « Dream count »
Overs. Niclas Nilsson. Albert Bonnier’s publisher, 474 pages (5)
Four African women come to speak in a grand and about the novel about love.
6. Viktoria Amelina: « See the women see the war »
Overs. Ola Wallin. Ersatz, 375 pages (8)
The documentary depictions from the war in Ukraine become a shaking and emergency document.
7. Irmgard Keun: « Children without land »
Overs. Martin Lagerholm. Lind & Co, 196 pages (6)
Roman from 1938 with autobiographical elements about children on the run from oppression and powerlessness.
8. Liza Alexandrova-Zorina: « The land of the liver »
Overs. David Szybek. Volante, 222 pages (7)
Brave and shocking reports on the exile cruisers who are used black in the construction industry.
9. Hans Gunnarsson: « The narrow happiness »
Albert Bonnier’s publisher, 262 pages (9)
Novelflier about ordinary everyday life that hides as sadly as dull dramas.
10. Henrik Bromander: « The closest »
Weyler, 565 pages (new)
50 years of everyday life and extremes in Jönköping where the thrill novel meets the family epic.
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