Rachel Willson-Broyles Archives

Cover image for Malma Station by Alex Schulman

Malma Station by Alex Schulman (transl. Rachel Willson-Broyles) ‘You are never alone’

15 March 2024 / 10 Comments

The blurb for Alex Schulman’s Malma Station was so impenetrable I’d have passed it by had I not been so impressed by The Survivors back in 2021. Schulman’s new novel explores similar themes following three journeys to the eponymous station deep in the Swedish countryside, separated by several decades. Often, when her parents fought, she […]

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Cover image for To Coook a Bear by Mikael Niemi

Five Swedish Novels I’ve Read

28 November 2022 / 20 Comments

Given how much of my viewing time has been spent there thanks to Walter Presents, you’d think I’d have read more Scandinavian fiction but perhaps it’s because so much of the translated variety is crime related. Below are five striking Swedish novels I’ve read, all with links to my reviews, beginning with an award-winning piece

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Cover image for The Survivors by Alex Schulman

The Survivors by Alex Schulman (transl. Rachel Willson-Broyles): ‘Where are my brothers?’

29 October 2021 / 10 Comments

It was its Swedish setting that attracted me to Alex Schulman’s The Survivors which came my way at a time when I was remembering holidays past, including one taken on the Gothenburg archipelago many years ago. It’s about a family who holiday every year at the same isolated lakeside cottage until, one summer, a dramatic

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Paperbacks to Look Out for in June 2017: Part Two

29 May 2017 / 12 Comments

Whereas a family theme – conventional or otherwise – ran through the first installment of June’s paperback preview, this one’s much more of a hodge-podge. Given the time of year, a book aimed fairly and squarely at the summer reading market seems as good a place to start as any. Invincible Summer has a structure

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Everything I Don’t Remember by Jonas Hassen Khemiri (transl. Rachel Willson-Broyles): A story in many voices

29 July 2016 / 8 Comments

What attracted me to Jonas Hassen Khemiri’s prize-winning novel was its structure. It’s the story of a young man who dies one April afternoon in Stockholm, his car wrecked in a crash which some speculate may have been suicide, others are sure was an accident. Khemiri tells Samuel’s story through a series of interviews with

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