Compared to her peers, there was something about Elsa that made her stand out and she knew it. So in the end we just pack it into bags and find somewhere to leave it.” ~ Fredrik Backman, My Grandmother Sends Her Regards and ApologisesĪt the heart of Backman’s novel is Elsa, a seven (going on eight) year-old girl. Sorrow and loss are constant, but if we all had to go through our whole lives carrying them the whole time, we wouldn’t be able to stand it. “People in the real world always say, when something terrible happens, that the sadness and loss and aching pain of the heart will “lessen as time passes,” but it isn’t true. The book was published under the alternative title My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry in the United States. In the same year when the English translation of his debut novel was released, Backman published his sophomore novel, Min mormor hälsar och säger förlåt, which was later translated into English as My Grandmother Sends her Regards and Apologises in 2015.
Riding on the unprecedented success of his debut novel, Backman published a humorous collection of essays about fatherhood, Saker min son behöver veta om världen later in 2012 it was released in English as Things My Son Needs to Know About the World in 2019. In Backman, Sweden has found a new voice that readers across the world can look forward to.
It was an immediate success, even occupying a place in New York Times Best Seller List for 42 weeks. A year after its publication in Swedish, En man som heter Ove was made available to anglophone readers as it was translated into English as A Man Called Ove. Prior to the publication of his debut novel En man som heter Ove in 2012, Backman worked as a columnist for major publications such as Helsingborgs Dagblad and Moore Magazine. Among this group of Swedish writers who are gaining global recognition is Fredrik Backman. The future of Swedish literature is in safe hands as a flock of Swedish writers is taking up the global stage. The most recent awardee was Tomas Tranströmer. Swedish writers also pulled off one of the rarities in the Prize’s history when Eyvind Johnson and Harry Martinson were declared joint winners. Among these Swedish Nobel Laureates in Literature are Selma Lagerlöf (1909), the first woman to be awarded the Prize and poets Verner von Heidenstam (1916) and Erik Axel Karlfeldt (1931). In the world of literature, Sweden has a long and established tradition of producing some of the world’s most recognized writers, several of whom would be awarded by the Swedish Academy with the Nobel Prize in Literature, considered as one, if not the most prestigious literary awards out there. It is also renowned for being the home of the prestigious Nobel Prizes. With a long history that spanned almost 14 millennia, it has established itself as one of the most progressive nations in the world. In the Scandinavian region lying in the northern part of Europe is the nation of Sweden.
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