Archive for the ‘Writing’ Category

Please note that I am in the process of switching agents. I will provide all the details in due course. In the meantime, please address all rights enquiries directly to me.

Writing is mostly a very lonely activity (not sure if activity is the right word in my case). So, when suddenly a ray of light enters the dark space where I exist it brings great joy. And a moment of light. Today, paralysed in front of my computer waiting for words that just would not emerge, I googled myself. The ultimate egocentric frivolity, I suppose. I happened to land on a German review of my second novel, Die Nacht tägt deinen Namen. And suddenly there was light. Beautifully written, it expressed such profound sympathy and understanding of my intentions that I felt like crying.

Read the review here (in German): Die Nach trägt deinen Namen

I am in the process of reviewing my representation. Until further notice please direct any matters concerning publishing rights directly to me.

This small house in Visby is a gift. Not the house itself, of course, but this week when it belongs to me. Although it comes with no ties, it is provided by my Swedish publisher, Albert Bonniers Förlag, with the understanding that I should be writing. And everything here is conducive to this. It is so still and quiet that I find myself turning on the radio every now and then, just to check if the world is still there. The view is breathtakingly beatiful without being distracting. And just these last few days I have recieved two messages from readers prompting me to keep writing. One gift after the other, all pointing in the same direction. Towards my steadily shrinking manuscript.
What is it with me? How does my brain function? Or not, as the case may be. And, even more frightening, what will it take for me to focus and put in words what is already stored in my brain?

Today I bought myself a chair. It has a name: Non. It’s made of rubber and steel. It looks light, but it is very heavy. I suppose that what we all aspire to.

I am hoping my chair will help me get on with the writing of my third novel. I thought the second would be the hardest, but I am no longer sure.

Here is a short excerpt from what I am calling ‘The kindness of your nature’:

Lately I have been overcome by a sense of urgency. As if there is something I need to do. Not in a material sense. Just a need to put my life in order. Even though it will only be for me, it feels acutely urgent. Why, I don’t quite understand. My life is at it has been for years now, and I don’t expect any dramatic changes to come. Nothing has happened to bring about this shift. This sense of urgency.
But something has changed. I have changed. Perhaps it’s just aging, a growing awareness of the limit of my time. And in the same way it feels impossible to resist. As if I am facing an inevitable process that I cannot escape. Not that I feel a need to. In fact, I am embracing it with something that feels close to anticipation.
The mental space where I exist now is different from all the others that I have inhabited. Perhaps this urge has something to do with that. There is a change in my perception and though this is the result of a long process, it is only lately that I have come to realise that there is a view from here, while all the places where I have lived before have offered no perspective, no view. Not from the inside looking out, nor from the outside looking in. In that sense I should feel exposed now, I suppose. Strangely, I don’t. Instead, I am filled with this inexplicable anticipation. As if the opening of doors will be helpful. Perhaps I am hoping that it will help me to put my life in some kind of chronological order. I don’t know why it now feels so important to open the doors to the spaces where why memories are kept, while before the ability to close them, one after other, seemed essential to survival.
It might very well prove to be a futile exercise. I am not sure there is order in anybody’s life. Life is irrational and illogical. And we have to accept that, try and arrange our lives around it.
But there is a timeline to our lives. One event leads to another one. One act leads to a result, which becomes the basis for our next action. That is how we make some semblance of order: we put the events that make up our lives along a timeline. And that way we think that we can also see some kind of causality. I am not sure that it is true, but I can understand that it is helpful. And now I want it for me.
There are so many story lines, though. So many characters acting independently in the spectacle that is my life. And they all influence each other in ways that are impossible to fully control or even grasp. There is no absolute certainty about anything. I once believed that science offered certainty. That there were scientific rules that were irrevocable. I think this might have been the reason for my love of science at school. And the reason why I chose to study medicine. I believed that science would offer a world with absolute truths. But the deeper I delved, the less absolute it appeared. There were inconstancies there, too. New research made previous truths obsolete. And always, beyond every answer and every explanation, there was another, yet unanswered question. It was like plotting your way through gradually familiar territories, but with a constant awareness of another, unknown, or unknowable reality beyond the known. Every answer was followed by a question mark. Every step took me further into the unknown. And the unknowable grew, while what I knew seemed to shrink in quantity as well as value.
I have lived here almost ten years now. It is a lonely existence, mostly. I don’t mind, but isolation aggravates uncertainty, I think. Life takes on a surreal quality. Lately, I have found myself wishing for a way of corroborating an event, a memory. I have been overwhelmed by a longing to have some confirmation that my memories are still intact.
I like to think that I take good care of my important memories. I’m careful not to wear them down or alter them in any way. I try to keep them safe. But again, they are not kept in order. I know where each one is and what it contains, but it exists in a kind of vacuum, and with no connection to the others. I have no explanation as to why this is how I experience it. But I think that if I were able to take them out, one by one and place them in the right sequence, then perhaps they would be easier to carry. The painful ones might become more acceptable if I could see each one as belonging to what came before and after. I guess I am hoping for some understanding. Just for me. And forgiveness, perhaps. Not from others, but my own forgiveness, so that somehow perhaps I will finally be able to regard myself with a measure of compassion. Not love, I don’t expect that. Not pity, I don’t want that. But empathy, perhaps. For the little girl that was me. For the young woman I became. And for the middle aged person I am now.
What I am hoping for is for the memories to merge, to become an understandable whole. And ultimately make me whole.

People go to Prague to enjoy the beautiful city. There are tourists everywhere. So, for me it was interesting to be there for business – The Prague Book Fair. Walk the surprisingly empty streets just off the main tourist tracks. I stayed in a wonderful small hotel, Cerny Slon – the Black Elephant – just off the busy main square in the Old Town, yet quaint and quiet. And smelling of cooking, the old kind of real cooking that has never seen a microwave or a freezer. The kind of cooking my grandmother used to make: overcooked meat, slightly stale bread, gravy.

It was a strange experience to walk into a book store and ask for ‘Astrid a Veronika’ and be told by an excited girl behind the desk that the novel by ‘Olssonová’ was almost sold out and was ‘very, very good’. I held one of the two remaining copies in my hand with a sense of excitement. As if it has nothing to do with me.

I suppose book fairs are more or less the same the world over. The venue for the Prague Book Fair, The Pr?myslový palác, the central building of the Prague Exhibition Grounds, is an impressive Art Noveau building. Sadly the left wing was destroyed by fire last year and the part of the book fair in this part of the building this year has to cope with rather difficult conditions. In spite of this there are lots of visitors and queues to many stands. I have no idea what to expect for my stage appearance, but discover that it is a very well organized interview on stage. My interpreter, Linda Kaprová, speaks flawless Swedish and also proves to be both professional and sensitive. The audience is surprisingly large and includes the Swedish Ambassador. I come away very grateful and very impressed.
This visit made it possible for me to meet my publisher Metafora, and the people there who have made my book such a success. Often, my publishers remain rather anonymous. Now I have a face to the name of the people here.

I wouldn’t have missed it for the world!

Sonata for Miriam has now been sold to fifteen publishers:

Penguin (U.S.) 2009; Penguin (New Zealand) 2008; Bonniers (Sweden) 2008; Penguin (Australia) 2008; Uitgeverij Archipel (Netherlands) 2008; Bertelsmann, Taschenbuch (Germany) 2009; Shanghai Wanyu Culture and Art Company, simplified language rights (China) 2010, Forlaget Aronsen (Denmark) 2010; Vigmostad & Bjorke (Norway) 2009; Corbaccio (Italy) 2010; Solo Press (Taiwan) 2010; Gummerus (Finland) 2010; Bertelsmann (Poland) 2010; Kinneret (Israel) 2010; Salamandra (Spain), 2010 

    

 

‘Later on it has changed so that I have actually managed to complete a few books. But between them are periods of complete inability to create. It has taxed me more than anything else – often I have believed that I would break during such a period. Surely I will one day – unless the years dull and slow my senses so that an even worse destiny than this awaits me.

During these periods I have always thought that my inner self is in a state of a kind of hibernation. It is not present for me, I am separated from it. I cannot tell how painful it is to ‘live’ like this. Almost everything seems meaningless, I cannot concentrate on anything. The ability to experience desolateness which is so pronounced in me and which so often is expressed in my writing, exercises a terrible reign during these times. But during these times the adjustments inside me, which are required for something new to be born, take place, I think. The unconscious creates on its own, in a fashion unfathomable to me. I have often had a feeling of this secret process, these adjustments – I cannot find a better word for it, for how it feels. But to imagine that it is sweet and ‘big’ to be part of this ‘rejuvenation’, if you can call it that, would be a total mistake. Not even the slightest joy or sense of pleasure is associated with the inaccessible process, just a definite, painful disquiet and a deep feeling of complete mental powerlessness.

The amiable idea that it must be ‘delightful’ to be a writer has little to do with reality, at least as far as I am concerned.’

Pär Lagerkvist (1891-1974), Swedish author, scriptwriter, poet and novelist, Noble prize laureate 1951.

From an unfinished autobiographical sketch.

trsl. Linda Olsson

 

 

 

Stockholm in December 2007

‘For a writer, the experience of living in a number of countries is an enormous boon. You can only understand the world if you see it from several sides. My latest book, which came into being in France, unfolds in a special geographic space: Those events which take place in Prague are seen through West European eyes, while what happens in France is seen through the eyes of Prague. It is an encounter of two worlds.’

Milan Kundera

  

Karekare in January 2008