The Complete Review Guide to Contemporary World Fiction

Maybe it is the long winter nights and the cold, but a slightly gloomy pall seems to hang over the fiction from the Scandinavian countries, reinforced by the works of some of the region’s best-known artists: Ingmar Bergman’s black-and-white films, Edvard Munch’s paintings of The Scream, and plays and novels by writers such as Henrik Ibsen (1828–1906), August Strindberg (1849–1912), and Knut Hamsun (1859–1952). Even now, with a wave of crime fiction from the region appearing in translation, the focus is, as the genre demands, on the bleak and darker side of life.

Despite their small populations—Sweden is the giant of the region but has only around 9 million inhabitants, and Iceland’s population is just over 300,000—each of the Nordic countries has a strong reading and publishing culture, supporting a great variety of fiction. In many respects, it is also a shared literary culture: even though these are distinct nations, their overlapping histories and continued close regional cooperation in many areas, as well as widespread linguistic similarities, has produced a reading and writing community that extends throughout the region.

Nordic Crime Fiction

In recent years, the worldwide interest in Scandinavian mysteries and thrillers has led to an astonishing amount of genre fiction flooding the market. In quantity and variety, this regional boom is comparable to that of Latin American magic realism in the wake of Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967, English 1970) and then fiction by English-speaking authors originally from India after Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children (1981). While the ten books of the Martin Beck series by the Swedish wife-and-husband team of Maj Sjöwall (b. 1935) and Per Wahlöö (1926–1975) are among the lasting milestones of recent Scandinavian fiction, they were relatively isolated. Now that has changed, led by Swedish author Henning Mankell (1948–2015), specifically his Kurt Wallander series, which began with Faceless Killers (1991, English 1997). While the low national rates of violent crime in these countries make them unlikely settings for crime fiction, the very rarity of murder may be a contributing factor to the success of these books, with their greater emphasis on psychological and social insight. The remoteness of these countries and their strong national identities, even as they find themselves increasingly closely tied to the global economy, has also created a juxtaposition that authors have effectively exploited.

Henning Mankell was the leader of the new Scandinavian wave, and the figure of Wallander is a particularly successful creation. In Mankell’s books, as in those by Sjöwall and Wahlöö, social observation and commentary are prominent but not so obtrusive as to weigh down the thrillers themselves, a balance that many Scandinavian crime writers have found. Of the rapidly expanding list of mystery authors whose work is available in English, the most notable are Norwegians Jo Nesbø (b. 1960) and Karin Fossum (b. 1954), Swede Kjell Eriksson (b. 1953), Dane Jussi Adler-Olsen (b. 1950), and Icelander Arnaldur Indriðason (b. 1961). Swedish author Stieg Larsson’s (1954–2004) posthumously published Millennium trilogy—The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2005, English 2008), The Girl Who Played with Fire (2006, English 2009), and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest (2007, English 2010)—is a more ambitious work, and it has been spectacularly successful.

Denmark’s three Nobel laureates—Henrik Pontoppidan (1857–1943) and Karl Gjellerup (1857–1919), who shared the prize in 1917, and Johannes V. Jensen (1873–1950), who won it in 1944—hardly figure any longer in English translation. Martin Andersen Nexø’s (1869–1954) four-volume Pelle the Conqueror (1906–1910, English 1913–1916) resurfaced as the basis for an Academy Award–winning film in 1988, but the only older Danish writers who are still widely read are Hans Christian Andersen (1805–1875) and Karen Blixen (writing also as Isak Dinesen and mainly in English, 1885–1962).

The internationally best-known Danish literary figure of recent times is Peter Høeg (b. 1957), whose Smilla’s Sense of Snow (published in Great Britain as Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow; 1992, English 1993) was a global success. Høeg presents a strong but flawed protagonist and bleak settings in this stirring thriller that encompasses everything from postcolonial and minority concerns to biological threats. Its otherness extends even to an ambiguous ending, but despite not offering the usual satisfaction of a rounded-off story, Høeg’s book is consistently compelling. His penchant for the quirky and outsiders, characters with special qualities who are looking for escape or on the run—whether circus folk, as in The Quiet Girl (2006, English 2008); animals, as in The Woman and the Ape (1996, English 1996); or children, as in Borderliners (1993, English 1994)—can seem a bit forced. His first book, The History of Danish Dreams (1988, English 1995), tries to tell too many stories but has some appeal as a multigenerational picture of the times. Høeg’s later works are more controlled, if not necessarily much more restrained.

Much of Henrik Stangerup’s (1937–1998) fiction is even more directly colored by politics and philosophy than Høeg’s. A social-critical work like The Man Who Wanted to Be Guilty (1973, English 1982), a dystopian vision rooted in the Danish experience, may no longer translate quite as well as his historically based novels, but even these have a dense and often brooding intensity. Stangerup often uses foreign settings, sending his characters to Continental Europe, as in The Seducer (1985, English 1990) and Brother Jacob (1991, English 1993), or even Brazil, as in The Road to Lagoa Santa (1981, English 1984). But even in the most exotic or cosmopolitan locales, the characters, often based on historical figures, remain almost comically Scandinavian. The original Danish title of The Seducer is It Is Hard to Die in Dieppe, which is the subtitle of the English-language edition. It traces the life of the now obscure nineteenth-century literary critic Peder Ludvig Møller in a long tradition of tales of talented but failed writers and offers fascinating insights into the Danish literary culture of that era.

Some of the most interesting recent Danish works are short and precise. Solvej Balle’s (b. 1962) loosely connected collection of stories, According to the Law (1993, English 1996), is presented—slightly differently than in the Danish original, which is a more unified text—as “four accounts of mankind.” These short philosophical forays are intriguing, artful fictions in which each of the four main characters is searching for absoluteness, often with creative abandon. Peter Adolphsen’s (b. 1972) work also is minimalist, yet in Machine (2006, English 2008) and Brummstein (2003, English 2011), he reflects on nothing less than all of history and even prehistory. Even though he also focuses on individuals’ lives and fates, the contrast with the immensity of time and nature is striking in these unusual works. Machine takes a drop of oil across millions of years, from its origins as the heart of a prehistoric horse through its transformation into oil, gasoline, and then the exhaust fumes of a car. It is the fatal effect of the particles of that cancer-causing exhaust on which the novella turns, and Adolphsen’s description of the complexity—and arbitrariness—of cause and effect is poignant.

LITERATURE OF THE FAROE ISLANDS

Even the small Faroe Islands (population ca. 50,000) has supported some authors, writing in Danish or Faroese.

Heðin Brú’s (1901–1987) novel of Faroese life, The Old Man and His Sons (1940, English 1970), remains the best introduction to the Faroes.

Gunnar Hoydal’s (b. 1941) Under Southern Stars (1992, English 2003) is the most interesting recent work available in English, contrasting the experiences of a diplomat’s family in Latin America with that in their native Faroes.

• Morten Ramsland’s (b. 1971) Doghead (2005, English 2007) is a rowdy, big family novel about three generations.

• Christian Jungersen’s (b. 1962) The Exception (2004, English 2006) sets small-scale group- and workplace-dynamics against a backdrop of genocide, with some very visible cracks in the veneer of Scandinavian calm and idealism.

• Naja Marie Aidt’s (b. 1963) dark collection of stories, Baboon (2006, English 2014), and her novel Rock, Paper, Scissors (2012, English 2015) introduce a major talent to English-speaking readers.

• Jens Christian Grøndahl (b. 1959) wrote meditative and personal novels in which his protagonists have to face a sudden change in a domestic world that seems comfortably settled.

• Villy Sørensen (1929–2001) is known for short stories in collections like Tutelary Tales (1964, English 1988), as well as his variation on classical myth, The Downfall of the Gods (1982, English 1989).

• Carsten Jensen’s (b. 1952) We, the Drowned (2006, English 2010) chronicles the adventures of the seafaring inhabitants of the small community of Marstal, from the mid-nineteenth century through the end of World War II.

In several respects, Finland is the odd man out among the Scandinavian countries, particularly because of the Finnish language, which bears no resemblance to those of the other Scandinavian countries. Its linguistic isolation has also meant that relatively little Finnish literature has been translated into English, though ironically one of the most successful foreign novels ever published in the United States was written in Finnish, Mika Waltari’s (1908–1979) best-selling historical fiction, The Egyptian (1945, English 1949).

Aleksis Kivi’s (1834–1872) Seven Brothers (1870, English 1929, 1991) is the one Finnish classic that still holds interest today. Its comically exaggerated presentation of many national characteristics, from a very stubborn and occasionally hapless self-sufficiency and individuality to a specific sort of dry humor, continue to be found in Finnish fiction.

The prolific Arto Paasilinna (b. 1942) has achieved the greatest international success with his creative and comic novels. Despite being widely translated into many languages, only a very limited amount of his work is available in English. The Year of the Hare (1975, English 1996) and The Howling Miller (1981, English 2007) are representative earlier works that show his talents and humor, featuring self-reliant protagonists who, naturally (and comically), have their clashes and confrontations with society at large. Paasilinna is very good at presenting their stubborn independent streaks, and he always sides with the sensible, nature-loving, quick-thinking loners over the meddling, stifling bureaucracy of government and the big city. The majority of Paasilinna’s novels could be called variations on these same themes, but with enough diversity to offer enjoyable light entertainment.

Among the most successful and accessible recent translations from the Finnish is Johanna Sinisalo’s (b. 1958) charming Not Before Sundown (published in the United States as Troll; 2000, English 2003). Set in a contemporary Finland where trolls do exist (but are very rarely seen), the chapters alternate between a straightforward narrative, centered on a man who takes in a troll, and a variety of background information from books and newspapers about the species. Sinisalo’s not-very-far removed alternate reality balances comedy, poignancy, and a good story—and the troll is hard to resist.

• Sofi Oksanen’s (b. 1977) popular and acclaimed novels Purge (2008, English 2010) and When the Doves Disappeared (2012, English 2015) trace Estonia’s tumultuous history from the 1940s through the 1990s under both Nazi and Soviet rule.

• Leena Krohn’s (b. 1947) unsettling story of a stranger in a strange land, Tainaron (1985, English 2004), is typical of her fantastical fiction. Krohn’s Collected Fiction (English 2015) is a representative selection of her remarkable work.

• Anita Konkka (b. 1941) is the author of A Fool’s Paradise (1978, English 2006).

• Väinö Linna’s (1920–1992) novel of the Finnish civil war, The Unknown Soldier (1954, English 1957, and as Unknown Soldiers, 2015), still casts a shadow over fiction dealing with Finnish history and has an easy claim to being the greatest novel about that period.

Finland also is home to a small but significant Swedish-speaking minority, which includes several notable authors. Although Tove Jansson (1914–2001) is best known for her Moomin comics, she also wrote fiction. Her short autobiographical novels, The Summer Book (1972, English 1974) and Fair Play (1989, English 2007), are models of restraint, about the simple and everyday whose imagery and small episodes linger on. The psychological drama that unfolds in The True Deceiver (1982, English 2009) is also presented in an understated, almost simple, style. In this novel, a young woman, Katri Kling, wants to insinuate herself and the only person she cares for, her brother, in the life—and house—of a local artist but finds that the means to her ends are, in part, beyond her.

Several of Bo Carpelan’s (1926–2011) books have been translated, of which his novel Axel (1986, English 1991) is the most important. Presented largely in the form of a fictional diary, Carpelan here reimagines the life of his great-uncle Axel Carpelan and his relationship with the composer Jean Sibelius. The novel is effective both as biography and, in evoking a close friendship and describing the role of music in these characters’ lives, as a work of fiction.

• Monika Fagerholm (b. 1961) wrote the novels The American Girl (2004, English 2010) and its sequel, The Glitter Scene (2009, English 2011).

Even though there are only around 300,000 speakers of Icelandic, almost all concentrated on the geographically remote island, the Icelandic literary culture is thriving, and a considerable amount of its fiction is available in English translation.

With a literary tradition going back to the Old Norse eddas, it is the 1955 Nobel laureate Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) who is the best introduction to contemporary Icelandic literature. He published his first book at seventeen, and after traveling widely through Europe and spending several years in the United States, he settled in his native Iceland. Although he drifted away from the Catholicism he had embraced as a young man and turned instead to socialism, religion (and religious figures) continued to play a role in many of his novels.

Among Halldór’s major works available in English are several grand sagas of the nation and its people. Independent People (1934–1935, English 1945) is a story about trying to live off the land in the early twentieth century. World Light (1937–1940, English 1969) is the antiromantic tale of a deluded young poet, destined not to achieve the fame of which he is so certain. Even though much of Halldór ‘s fiction is set solely in Iceland, in several novels his protagonists compare island life with that abroad, notably in Paradise Reclaimed (1960, English 1962), in which a farmer weighs the opportunities offered by Mormonism and abroad, in Utah, against those back home.

THE BJÖRK CONNECTION

Several prominent authors have a connection to Iceland’s best-known recent cultural exports, singer-actress Björk and her band, The Sugar-cubes.

The poet Sjón (b. 1962) wrote the lyrics to some of her songs (and was nominated for an Academy Award for “I’ve Seen It All”), and his short novel The Blue Fox (2004, English 2008) is a delicate piece set in the late nineteenth century that uses rough nature in a contrast to the more ethereal.

Bragi Ólafsson (b. 1962), The Sugarcubes’ bassist, has written several novels, the first translated as The Pets (2001, English 2008). It is narrated by a protagonist who hides under his bed for most of the novel in order to avoid a confrontation.

• Einar Kárason’s (b. 1955) Devil’s Island (1983, English 2000) describes Iceland’s transformation after World War II, focusing on the effect of the British and then the American military presence on the local population.

• Ólafur Gunnarsson’s (b. 1948) broad societal panoramas include Trolls’ Cathedral (1992, English 1997) and Potter’s Field (1996, English 2000).

• Hallgrímur Helgason’s (b. 1959) 101 Reykjavík (1996, English 2002) is an agreeably laid-back slacker perspective of contemporary Iceland, and his The Hitman’s Guide to Housecleaning (2012, Icelandic 2008) was originally written in English but was first published in Icelandic.

Among Halldór’s other (and shorter) novels, the more overtly political The Atom Station (1948, English 1961) is still of interest and not nearly as dated as one might imagine, given the subject matter. The comic Christianity at the Glacier (1968, English 1972, revised as Under the Glacier, 1999) mixes local religion and mythology in an entertaining story about an emissary sent by the bishop of Iceland to look into the activities of a pastor in a distant corner of the country. The emissary is sent as an observer, not an investigator, instructed simply to record conversations and document what he finds. He even identifies himself simply as EmBi, the emissary of the bishop, rather than by name. The local customs in the distant outpost prove far stranger than he expected, however, and he finds his uninvolved objectivity hard to maintain.

Einar Már Guðmundsson’s (b. 1954) modern, urban fiction is informed by poetry and international influences and shows considerable experimental range. The poetic hodgepodge in the rapid succession of short chapters of Epilogue of the Raindrops (1982, English 1994) is stylistically interesting, but Einar’s better-grounded chronicle of a character losing his grip on reality in Angels of the Universe (1993, English 1995), taking place during the 1960s, is the more convincing work.

Norway has long had a rich literary tradition and with Dag Solstad (b. 1941), Per Petterson (b. 1952), Jan Kjærstad (b. 1953), Lars Saabye Christensen (b. 1953), Jon Fosse (b. 1959), and Karl Ove Knausgaard (b. 1968) boasts some of Europe’s leading contemporary writers.

Nobel Prize winners Knut Hamsun (1859–1952) and Sigrid Undset (1882–1949) remain the most popular modern Norwegian authors. Even though Hamsun became a Nazi sympathizer (going so far as to give his Nobel Prize medal to German propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels), the breadth and depth of Hamsun’s output have sustained his literary reputation and much of his work, beginning with the classic starving-artist novel, Hunger (1890, English 1899, 1967, 1996), as well as those novels describing Norwegian country life. Undset is best known for her historical works set in the Middle Ages, especially Kristin Lavransdatter (1920–1922, English 1923–1927, 1997–2000). Less well known, Sigurd Hoel’s (1890–1960) novels offer good snapshots of Norway in the first half of the twentieth century, with Sinners in Summertime (1927, English 1930) an interesting glimpse of the 1920s and Meeting at the Milestone (1947, English 1951, 2002) an early attempt to describe Norway under German occupation during World War II.

Jens Bjørneboe’s (1920–1976) soft-porn novel, Without a Stitch (1966, English 1969), was the first of his works to be translated into English, on the heels of the 1968 Danish film version and at a time when Scandinavia was seen as a center of sexual freedom. A rapid change in sexual mores and literary permissiveness have now made it little more than an amusingly dated curiosity, but Bjørneboe’s other works are still worth seeking out. His audacious History of Bestiality trilogy—Moment of Freedom (1966, English 1975), Powderhouse (1969, English 2000), and The Silence (1973, English 2000)—is a dark but powerful consideration of what the world has come to, a creative philosophical indictment of Europe and European culture that is strongly influenced by the 1960s disillusionment with postwar society and reconstruction.

Several of Lars Saabye Christensen’s (b. 1953) works are built on a fateful twist for the main character and then describe how he deals with it. In The Joker (1986, English 1991), the protagonist reads his obituary in the newspaper; the title character in Herman (1988, English 1992) is a young boy who goes bald; and in The Model (2005, English 2007), a painter’s midlife crisis is exacerbated to near hysteria when he learns he will lose his eyesight. Each of these works has some appeal, but Christensen fares better when he tackles larger subjects. In his longer novels that present life stories of growing up in Norway, such as Beatles (1984, English 2009) and The Half Brother (2001, English 2003), he allows his stories to unfold more slowly, building up his characters and providing enough background to make them more compelling.

Jan Kjærstad’s (b. 1953) massive Wergeland trilogy—The Seducer (1993, English 2003), The Conqueror (1996, English 2007), and The Discoverer (1999, English 2009)—as well as Dag Solstad’s (b. 1941) slim Shyness and Dignity (1994, English 2006) are among the high-points of recent Scandinavian fiction. Each focuses on the life of an individual: Kjærstad’s trilogy is an examination and constant reexamination of media celebrity Jonas Wergeland’s life. Solstad’s novel centers on one decisive day in the life of a teacher. Firmly anchored in culture—modern culture, specifically television in Wergeland’s case and literature in schoolteacher Elias Rukla’s case—these novels are detailed portraits of Norwegian society as refracted through the experiences, small and large, of these two well-drawn figures.

Each new book that appears in translation has solidified Per Petterson’s (b. 1952) reputation, and he may well be Norway’s leading contemporary author. Family and personal history play a role in all his works. In the Wake (2000, English 2002) is the most personal of his novels, in which Petterson deals with the tragic death of his parents and two of his brothers in a horrific ferry accident. Two novels that also look back to the time of World War II, To Siberia (1996, English 1998) and Out Stealing Horses (2003, English 2005), are less grim, but here too Petterson does not shy away from hard reality with his spare, evocative prose and sure hand in unfolding his tales.

In Karl Ove Knausgaard’s (b. 1968) A Time to Every Purpose Under Heaven (published in the United States as A Time for Everything; 2004, English 2008), young Antinous Bellori encounters actual angels in the sixteenth century and then devotes his life to studying them, the novel becoming both a commentary on and a reimagining of many biblical stories. Far more ambitious is Knausgaard’s mammoth six-volume Min Kamp (2009–2011), the first volume of which was published as My Struggle in the United States and A Death in the Family in Great Britain in 2012. This first-person account is closely (and, in his native Norway, very controversially) based on the life of the author and his family, with the defining event in the first volume the death of the narrator’s father. Knausgaard describes specific episodes and memories from his life—mainly his youth—in great detail, and part of his struggle here is in trying to figure out where to fit the pieces of his life. Proustian in its attention to detail and emotional resonance, My Struggle might even be compared with In Search of Lost Time.

• The great Tarjei Vesaas’s (1897–1970) fiction, most notably the haunting The Ice Palace (1963, English 1966), is written in simple, straightforward prose.

• Jon Fosse (b. 1959) is Norway’s leading dramatist, but he has also published many works of prose and poetry. The novel Melancholy (1995, English 2006) centers on real-life Norwegian landscape painter Lars Hertervig (1830–1902) and his nervous breakdown, while in Melancholy II (1996, English 2014), set shortly after the painter’s death, his surviving sister provides an alternate perspective on the artist’s life.

• Linn Ullmann’s (b. 1966) novels are marked by the gloom that hangs over them as death is anticipated, as in her novella dealing with euthanasia, Grace (2002, English 2005), or contemplated, as in Stella Descending (2001, English 2003).

• Jostein Gaarder’s (b. 1952) phenomenally successful novel-account of the history of philosophy, Sophie’s World (1991, English 1994), is targeted to teenagers, being transparently pedagogic yet artful enough for them to find it captivating.

• Roy Jacobsen (b. 1954) wrote a stirring account of one man’s stand against the Soviets on the Finnish front in 1939, The Burnt-Out Town of Miracles (2005, English 2007), as well as The New Water (1987, English 1997).

• Knut Faldbakken’s (b. 1941) works focus on personal, particularly sexual, issues. They begin to seem dated and limited, though, when compared with the not yet translated energetic novels straight out of—while also highly critical of—contemporary pop and consumer culture written by his son Matias Faldbakken (b. 1973; writing as Abo Rasul), such as The Cocka Hola Company (2001).

• Kjartan Fløgstad’s (b. 1944) Dollar Road (1977, English 1989), a far-reaching fictional survey, chronicles four decades of changing Norwegian life through the 1970s.

Currently, the dominant representatives of contemporary Swedish literary fiction in translation are still from the generation born in the mid-1930s, writers like Per Olov Enquist (b. 1934) and Lars Gustafsson (b. 1936). Swedish writers have also consistently been at the forefront of the Scandinavian crime fiction boom, beginning with the books by the Sjöwall–Wahlöö team and more recently with the work of Kerstin Ekman (b. 1933) and of Henning Mankell, and Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy.

The fiction of some earlier established Swedish authors is still available and read in English translation, most notably that by Selma Lagerlöf (1858–1940) and Hjalmar Söderberg (1869–1941). August Strindberg (1849–1912) could be included as well, though his plays tend to take precedence over his fiction. Then the end of World War II marked a new starting point. Although Pär Lagerkvist (1891–1974) already was an important figure, his chilling book of evil and hatred, The Dwarf (1944, English 1945), solidified his international fame. His later works, such as Barabbas (1950, English 1951) and The Sibyl (1956, English 1958), often creatively treat religious subjects and themes and also deservedly remain popular.

One of the few of P. C. Jersild’s (b. 1935) novels available in translation is the postapocalyptic After the Flood (1982, English 1986), set in a world devastated by a nuclear conflagration, albeit much of his work also displays a light and humorous side. The most imaginative efforts, including his first great success, the Italo Calvino–inspired bird’s-eye romp through part of history, Calvinols resa genom världen (1965), and Holgerssons (1991), in which Jersild resurrects and appropriates Selma Lagerlöf’s Nils Holgersson, have not yet been translated. Jersild’s creative approach to social criticism is on display in A Living Soul (1980, English 1988), which is narrated by a disembodied human brain. Children’s Island (1976, English 1986) is the story of a boy who wants to find the answers to life’s pressing questions before he is overwhelmed by puberty and adulthood, which is strongly colored by its setting and time, the Stockholm of the mid-1970s. It is the most obviously appealing of Jersild’s works.

Several of Torgny Lindgren’s (b. 1938) works of fiction are explicitly religious, like his elaboration of the biblical story in Bathsheba (1984, English 1988), but even those that are not have a moral gravity. Light (1988, English 1992), yet another Scandinavian novel that centers on an isolated community in a world that has collapsed, is an examination of trying to determine right and wrong. Simply told, Lindgren’s story of two long estranged brothers, Sweetness (1995, English 2000), is one of his greatest successes, and Hash (2002, English 2004)—referring to an elaborate dish, not the drug—narrated by a 107-year-old former newspaper reporter, has a lot of quirky charm.

Per Olov Enquist (b. 1934) is one of Sweden’s most often translated authors, and his work (which includes several strong dramas) is among the most consistent and provocative. The Legionnaires (1968, English 1973), which investigates the controversial repatriation of 167 soldiers from the Baltic states who served in the German army during World War II but surrendered to the Swedish authorities (and wanted at all costs to avoid being returned to what by then was part of the Soviet Union), is the most straightforwardly documentary of Enquist’s novels.

Enquist bases much of his fiction on historical fact, with many of recent works relying primarily on historical figures, both famous and obscure. The Royal Physician’s Visit (published in Great Britain as The Visit of the Royal Physician; 1999, English 2001) centers on Danish King Christian VII and his personal physician, Johann Friedrich Struensee. The king is a frail but willful puppet, supposedly all-powerful yet beaten into submission as a child and then manipulated by the politicians at court. Struensee, hired as the king’s personal physician, cannot help but take advantage of the situation in which he finds himself. He merely wants to do good, and the king—preoccupied with himself and indifferent to policy and politics—willingly becomes an instrument for him to test his enlightened philosophy. The experiment, however, proves too bold for others in power, and Struensee’s efforts go for naught, a small, false start toward enlightened government snuffed out before it could take hold.

The Book About Blanche and Marie (2004, English 2006) is about Blanche Wittmann—a famous hysteria patient of Jean-Martin Charcot—and Marie Curie, in whose laboratory Blanche eventually works. Invented biography, literary interpretation, and speculative digressions all can be found in this unusual and colorful narrative tour de force. Captain Nemo’s Library (1991, English 1992) is the only one of Enquist’s novels available in English that is not based on history. Instead, this is a personal and domestic tale of two boys who were switched at birth and then, when the mistake was discovered, switched back again at age six, leaving each, completely displaced, with his biological family..

Lars Gustafsson (b. 1936) is the other major Swedish author whose works are widely available in English, most of which are more accessible than Enquist’s or Lindgren’s fiction. Several of the longtime University of Texas, Austin, professor’s novels are set in Texas, beginning with the amusing and typically philosophically playful The Tennis Players (1977, English 1983). Not all of Gustafsson’s Texas novels have been translated, but The Tale of a Dog (1993, English 1998) has, and even though the narrator is not quite believable as that of the Texas judge he is meant to be, this story of a Paul de Man–like professor’s murder is a satisfying display of Gustafsson’s moral and philosophical interests and literary abilities. Gustafsson’s most formally complex (and longest) novel, the three-part Bernard Foy’s Third Castling (1986, English 1988), begins as a thriller, but its clever, self-reflexive structure continually offers new perspectives and surprises.

Among Gustafsson’s strongest works is The Death of a Beekeeper (1978, English 1981), presented in the form of the notes left behind by a man suffering from cancer who had resigned himself to his death. The former teacher, also named Lars, shares Gustafsson’s birth date, as does one of the central characters in Funeral Music for Freemasons (1983, English 1987), which follows the lives and different fates of three friends. Indeed, in some of his novels Gustafsson himself is a presence, and the title of one of them, Herr Gustafsson själv (1971), not yet available in English, even translates as Mr. Gustafsson Himself. The most entertaining of these variations of the author playing a part is the fantastical Sigismund (1976, English 1985), set in contemporary Germany but ranging across past and future in dream and reality.

CONTROVERSIAL SWEDISH NOBEL PRIZE WINNERS

Although Harry Martinson (1904–1978) and Eyvind Johnson (1900–1976) shared the 1974 Nobel Prize, it seems that winning the prize did nothing to enhance their reputations or spur interest in their work. Given that the Swedish Academy chose to honor two of its own over Saul Bellow, Graham Greene, and Vladimir Nabokov, some skepticism was perhaps in order, but works by both authors had appeared in English long before they received the prizes and still offer some interest. The best known of these, Martinson’s Aniara (1956, English 1963, 1991), is a worthwhile curiosity. A rare example of not one but two genres widely underrepresented in translation, Aniara is both an epic poem and a work of science fiction. Martinson’s existential focus makes it easier to overlook the dated aspects of this novel-in-verse, and it is considerably better than the typical apocalyptic works of that atom-testing age.

• Stig Dagerman (1923–1954) was the star of postwar Swedish literature, bursting on the scene with a book about those dark times, The Snake (1945, English 1995), a collection of stories about confronting fear, most of which takes place in an army barracks. A sense of menace and violence helps, but most of Dagerman’s work is still that of a very young writer. Unfortunately, he quickly burned out and committed suicide.

• Kerstin Ekman (b. 1933) bridges the divide between literary and genre fiction with books ranging from the crime novel Blackwater (1993, English 1996) to The Forest of Hours (1988, English 1998), a troll story covering five centuries.

• Mikael Niemi’s (b. 1959) Popular Music from Vittula (2000, English 2003) is a ribald tale of growing up in the far north of Sweden.