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Dear Reader,
Welcome to the first of this year’s Litro World Series: Litro #152, the Sweden issue.
Litro has always been a keen promoter of outstanding fiction in translation. This year, as part of our annual World Series editions, we will bring London readers not one, not two, but three special editions in translation.
As Cuba grows ever more accessible to outsiders, Litro will guide readers through its literary and artistic landscape, bringing together some of Cuba’s most exciting voices and artists in a special Cuba edition this July. To mark the edition, we will also be taking over Waterstones Piccadilly for a special evening of words and music. Follow Litro on social media @LitroMagazine for details.
I know: you may already be dreaming of summer, getting ready for a beach getaway, with autumn still a distant thought. But in October, we will bring an Indian summer to our pages as we turn the magazine over to the celebrated Indian author Shashi Tharoor, who will guest edit the India edition.
In the meantime, we have given our pages to our northern neighbours: Sweden. Our cover artwork is Painting Series #2 (2011) by award-winning Swedish artist Maria Friberg, courtesy of Pi Artworks.
The stories in these pages have been compiled by Swedish translator Nichola Smalley. Nichola writes:
Even those of you who have never been to Sweden will probably have ideas about what it is like, and what kind of literature comes out of it — moody detectives, anyone? In putting together this special issue, I wanted to present a different view of our northern neighbours.
We open the issue with eternal love on the streets of contemporary Stockholm, as in Jonas Hassen Khemiri’s tale of less-than-perfect memories, “Unchanged Unending”; travel to foreign climes for an ill-judged proposal at a Spanish bullfight in Lina Wolff’s “Verónica”; consider political perspectives, as Agri Ismaïl comments on racialised politics in Sweden and abroad in his essay “The Wreckage of the Nation State in the Time of Global Migration”; and move through today’s digital culture and the social life of parks with an unexpectedly fraught walk in Cilla Naumann’s “The Park Begins Here”.
Each of these writers is celebrated in Sweden. Some have had novels or other work published in English; others will be new to UK readers. What they all have in common is a desire to write in new ways, challenging norms and expectations about what can be said and how. I hope the short texts presented here will inspire you to seek out more by these writers, and by others from Sweden. There is a huge and diverse literary culture to discover.
