Sara Stridsberg

The Swedish Embassy and the MacLehose Press invited members of the Anglo-Swedish Society to the UK digital launch of The Antarctica of Love by Sara Stridsberg, translated by Deborah Bragan-Turner. The event was held via Zoom. Sara and Deborah were interviewed by editor Rose Green to discuss the book and translation process. At the end of the talk, the audience could ask questions. Sara Stridsberg is one of Sweden’s most highly regarded authors and playwrights. Her first novel, Happy Sally was about Sally Bauer, the first Scandinavian woman to swim the English Channel. Stridsberg achieved her international breakthrough with her second novel, The Faculty of Dreams, which won the Nordic Council’s literary prize; the English translation by Deborah Bragan-Turner was longlisted for the 2019 International Booker Prize. Stridsberg’s novels have been translated into 25 languages, and she has been shortlisted for the prestigious August Prize three times. In 2016, Sara Stridsberg was elected as the 13th chair of the Swedish Academy. In April 2018, she resigned from the Academy in solidarity with Sara Danius and the Me Too Movement. Deborah Bragan-Turner is a translator of Swedish literature and a former bookseller and academic librarian. She studied Scandinavian Languages at University College, London, and her translations include works by Per Olov Enquist and Anna Swärd. ABOUT THE ANTARCTICA OF LOVE: Inni lives her life on the margins, but it is a life that is full and complex, filled with different shades of dark and light... Until she is brutally murdered one summer's day on a lakeshore at the heart of a distant, rain-washed forest. On the surface, this is the story of the moment her life is violently extinguished - a moment that will never end, not ever - but it is also about the time before, and about the lives that carry on afterwards. It's about her children, her parents, her childhood of neglect, her volatile adolescence, and the chain of choices, tragedies and accidents that lead her to a life on the streets and take her into the wrong crowd, the wrong places and, finally, the wrong car with the wrong person. Sara Stridsberg's new novel is about absolute vulnerability, brutality and isolation. At times disturbing, this is a devastating story of unexpected love, tenderness and light in the total darkness. (photo: Thron Ullberg)