 “My
novel is to be about London and the theosophists in the
early twentieth century and I discover I’m seeing
things in pictures as I write. It’s rather comforting.
I can move around inside the pictures, invent things without
having to describe them. It’s like stepping into
a familiar landscape.”
Eva-Marie Liffner, from “Jag själv” (I
Myself), Svensk bokhandel 1/2001 p. 9 (translation by Sarah
Death)
Original
Title: Camera
 Publisher:
Natur och Kultur, 2001. ISBN: 912708617 (hb); 9127093042 (pb)
Camera is a remarkable book. It is
technically interesting for many reasons. It has two interlocking
stories running
in parallel, one set in 2002 and one in 1905. The evocation
of the past is sensuous and intense. Recalling the past fascinates
Liffner, who made the role of photography in capturing as
well as distorting reality the central theme of her narrative.
Among other things, she says on the
cover of Camera: “I
like taking photographs of objects, detailed photos with
slow film that can be endlessly magnified. You
can enter the image and once more seek that exact reality, just that moment.
Sometimes I believe that events keep unfolding inside the old scenes.”
Camera was greeted with acclaim. Jointly
with another “debutant”, Åke
Smedberg, Eva-Marie Liffner received the Swedish Detective Novel Academy (Svenska
Deckarakademin) prize for a first novel. She also received the Poloni Prize,
earmarked for “a promising Swedish woman writer of detective novels” (this
prize has now been discontinued) and a newly-created prize called the Flint Axe,
which rewards “really good detective stories in a historical setting”.
In addition, Eva-Marie Liffner was given the prize awarded by the Gothenburg
Book Fair to the best first-time novelist.
|
“E-M
Liffner was born 1971 in Gothenburg, where she lives.” This
is part of Liffner’s terse description of herself,
which continues: “After studying subjects such as archaeology
and history of ideas, she became a journalist. Then she discovered
that she preferred writing untrue stories. Camera is her
first book.”
