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from Snow
Ellen Mattson
Translated and introduced by Sarah Death

Ellen MattsonEllen Mattson was born in 1962 on Sweden’s west coast and is the daughter of children’s book author Olle Mattson. She has lived in Uddevalla for many years. She has worked in librarianship and now writes literary criticism alongside her novels.


SnöSnow was described by Jan Arnald in Göteborgs-Posten (24.08.01) as “a compact, angular little novel that’s hard not to love”.

Original Title: Snö
Publisher: Albert Bonniers Förlag, 2001, 194 pages. ISBN: 9100576654

It is 1718 and deepest winter in an unnamed little town on the west coast of Sweden that is about to go down in history. Karl XII, the “warrior king”, has just met his end on the battlefield across the border in Norway. Soon his body will be brought to the town to be embalmed by the royal physician and straggling hordes of starving, frostbitten, wounded troops will also make their way there, putting huge demands on the resources of the little community. Jakob Törn is the town’s apothecary and by his own admission a second-rate one, a reject from a nobler profession. As the novel opens, he is a perplexed refugee from his own home, where his hot-blooded wife reacted in an unexpectedly brutal manner when he told her the news of the king’s death.

Previous novels:
Nattvandring (Night Walk, 1992)
Vägen härifrån (The Way From Here, 1995)
Resenärerna (The Travellers, 1998, winner of Svenska Dagbladets literary prize)
Poetens liv (The Life of the Poet, 1999, also published in German by Klett-Cotta)
Contents of the 2003:1 issue

Continuity and Change in Swedish Prose Fiction
Ingrid Elam

Snow
Ellen Mattson
In the Red Queen's Castle
Lars Jakobson
Camera
Eva-Marie Liffner
Clouds
Elisabet Hermodsson
Via Liljendal
Susanne Ringell
2008:1 issue


Current Issue: 2008: 1

2006 Supplement
Latest Supplement: 2006
Writing for Young Adults


  • Girls Take Over in Swedish Young Adult Fiction
    Maria Nikolajeva
  • from Little Marie
    Mats Wahl
  • from The Stars Are Shining on the Ceiling
    Johanna Thydell
  • from Lina's Noctury
    Emma Hamberg
  • from Sandor Slash Ida
    Sara Kadefors
  • from Not a Greek God, Exactly
    Katarina Kieri
  • The Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award
    Birgitta Fransson
  • The Marsh Award
    Patricia Crampton
  • from A Sk8er's Diary
    Andreas Soneryd
  • from When Nobody is Looking
    Karin Holmlund
  • from Dogge
    Mikael Engström
  • from Life According to Rosa and a Boy Called Ville
    Måns Gahrton & Johan Unenge
  • from Habib: The Meaning of Life
    Douglas Foley
  • Henning Mankell on African Poverty and Aids: Not in Front of the Children?
    Anna Paterson
  • Book Review: Outside In. Children's Books in Translation
    Marlaine Delargy
                 
 
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