OUR STORE IS CLOSED ON ANZAC DAY: THURSDAY 25 APRIL
Sara Stridsberg, born in 1972, is a writer, playwright and former member of the Swedish Academy. Her first novel, Happy Sally, was published in 2004, and her break-through came two years later with the publication of The Faculty of Dreams, her second novel, the English translation of which was longlisted for the Booker International Prize in 2019. Her novels have been translated into 25 languages, and she has been shortlisted for the prestigious August Prize three times, including in 2012 for her collection of plays, Medealand and Other Plays. She lives in Stockholm.
The Antarctica of Love is a shocking and beautiful subversion of the 'dead girl' trope. With fierce dignity, the narrator in this elegiac novel refuses to be reduced to murder victim/sex worker/addict; she is a poet, philosopher, and author of her own life story in this haunting portrait of the starkest meanings of love and family. Stridsberg's literary talent left me awestruck -- Kate Reed Petty Already with her second novel - The Faculty of Dreams, which was awarded the 2007 Nordic Council Literature Prize - Stridsberg proved that she is among the finest authors of contemporary Nordic literature ... With her latest work, The Antarctica of Love, Stridsberg has surpassed herself. The Antarctica of Love is a novel that one both rejects and cannot resist. It is brutal and oddly full of light, it is wild and violent, but also full of love and tenderness. * Aftenposten * A disturbingly beautiful book. Stridsberg writes perhaps the most taut and most beautiful prose in Sweden right now * Expressen * A shattering read from one of Scandinavia's truly modern storytellers, in prose that appears both more sophisticated and more accessible than previous works * Klassekampen * The book has a linguistic abundance that fires up the reader with energy and the conviction that this novel can be one of the best of the year * Adresseavisen * Gives voice to the unseen . . . A terrible and beautiful novel with unique moral heft. * Vart Land * Few writers craft such distinct imagery, in such poetic meanderings, with such beauty and precision, as Stridsberg * Svenska Dagbladet * The Antarctica of Love is an utterly brilliant novel * Skanska Dagbladet * Her story becomes inscribed upon our minds, so rich with poetic expressions and prosaic sentences that it is ultimately difficult to comprehend all the horror, since it is wrapped in such powerful words. ... Sara Stridsberg's The Antarctic of Love is this year's most poignant book * LitteraturMagazinet * The Antarctica of Love is Stridsberg's darkest and most powerful novel to date. Here, there is no romanticizing of marginalization ... Here, it's all intense presence and nerve, up until the moment of death itself * SVT Kulturnyheter * An amazing and almost unbearably precise novel * Dagens Nyheter * Stridsberg's language bears the unbearable, and provides a soft blanket that leads us into the worst - and beyond * Politiken *
