Engagement

Gun-Britt Sundström, Kathy Saranpa

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Paperback

Forthcoming
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Swedish

Penguin Classics
07 October 2025

Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945); Fiction in translation

Series: Penguin Modern Classics

A feminist cult classic about love, independence and what it means to be an individual, translated into English for the first time

'I want to have him, I really do. I just don't want him to have me.'

Martina and Gustav, students in 1970s Stockholm, meet and fall immediately into coupledom. But what is coupledom? A route to marriage? A declaration of co-dependency? A new dimension of commitment and responsibility? A sexual confrontation? Or is it a habit that an intelligent person must consider breaking? Martina and Gustav discuss their relationship endlessly, between themselves and with others, as they try to make it work.

Engagement, set during a time of social change and political upheaval, sees Martina trying to engage with the world on her own terms. Unwilling to marry, she finds herself in a state of permanent engagement while her friends settle down to marriage and children; uncertain of the world's future, she engages with demos, sit-ins and philosophy seminars in her quest for a new blueprint for joy. First published in 1976, when it was heralded as an instant classic, Engagement remains as relevant, hilarious and heartbreaking today.

By: Gun-Britt Sundström
Translated by: Kathy Saranpa
Imprint: Penguin Classics
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 216mm, Width: 137mm, Spine: 29mm
Weight: 474g
ISBN: 9780241688120
ISBN 10: 0241688124
Series: Penguin Modern Classics
Pages: 512
Publication Date: 07 October 2025
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

Gun-Britt Sundstr m (Author) Gun-Britt Sundstr m (b.1945) works as an author, critic and translator. She is the author of sixteen books, including Engagement (1976). Since the 1990s, Gun-Britt Sundstr m has established herself as one of Sweden's foremost translators of children's books and fiction. She received the Helga Prize in 2019 for her 'linguistic sensitivity, self-distance, black humour and acuity'. Kathy Saranpa (Translator) Kathy Saranpa (b.1955) translates from Swedish and Finnish into English. Her first book-length translation was Ingrid and Joachim Wall's A Silenced Voice (2020). Engagement fulfils a lifelong dream of rendering Maken into English.