Mail
PO Box 3159, SE-103 63
Stockholm, Sweden
Visiting Address
Sveavägen 56, Stockholm
Sweden
Phone
+46 8 696 89 10
E-mail
info@bonniergroupagency.se |
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| Category:
Fiction/
| Publication:
2007 Autumn
| Rights sold:
Danish/Gyldendal
Finnish/Schildts
German/Suhrkamp
Korean/Dongyang Books
| Agent:
Susanne Widén
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| Susanna Alakoski (Author) |
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| Swedish title: Svinalängorna |
WINNER OF THE AUGUST-PRIZE 2006 FOR BEST NOVEL OF THE YEAR!
300 000 copies of Susanna Alakoski's first novel sold in Sweden!
Motivation of the jury for the August-prize:
InThe Pigsties difficult living conditions force a group of children to develop strategies for their survival. Susanna Alakoski's modern depiction of class society is an infernal, yet humorous, journey through an adult world, where drunkenness and a disadvantageous position rule everyday life.
During the 1960's and 1970's a newly built housing area in the town of Ystad in the south of Sweden filled up with immigrants and low-income earners.
To Leena and her Finnish parents the new apartment is absolutely luxurious: three rooms, a balcony and parquet floor.
This is Leena's story about The Pigsties as the area became known - a loving and touching story of vulnerable people living an everyday life, which is slowly falling apart. A drastic depiction of accelerating chaos in the idyllic small town and how it is mastered by three girls with a talent for survival.
"Alakoski's writing has been likened to that of Frank McCourt, and it does indeed have some of the same exuberance, careworn charm and shocking impact."
(Swedish Book Review)
Reviews:
"Susanna Alakoski writes from the bird’s eye view of a child, she writes from below, she pays homage to women, she writes with authenticity and force. Not with sentimentality or looking for scapegoats, not handling words like guilt or shame.
Her simple style of writing is becoming to the story, an ingenious fit for what she has to tell us.”
Ystads Allehanda
”…one of the most captivating and entertaining novels I have read for years.”
Svenska Dagbladet
”Susanna Alakoski has written a fascinating novel…and managed to unite aesthetics and the existential – the result is great literature.”
Helsingborgs Dagblad
”What makes Susanna Alakoski’s novel so forceful is the fact that she manages to line up events and facts in the manner of Hemingway and other representatives of the hardboiled style and, like them, she charges the raw text with an electrifying suspense, making the reader ignite spontaneously, without a chance to squirm away from the interpretations suggested by the furiously advancing letters.”
Eskilstuna-Kuriren
 Sample translation
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