The ISGR librarian has during the last weeks attended four author talks.
Agri Ismaïl, a Kurdish author. His novel Hyper, which was published in English in the UK and Swedish in Sweden, is by many considered the biggest thing that has happened to “literature Scandinavia” in a long time. It is about a Kurdish family, Rafiq Kermanj escaping Tehran with his wife Xezal and their three children, trying to start a new life in London, with the financial crisis of 2008 as a background. Rafiq is paralyzed by everything he has lost though, so the family is having a hard time. In adulthood, the three siblings go their separate ways. Eldest son Mohammed stays in London and engages in the brutal financial industry. Siver, the daughter in the family, disappears into an unhappy marriage in Baghdad. Youngest son Laika retreats to a life where most things happen online.
Cecilia Davidsson was great fun, inspiring and interesting to listen to. She talked about her work on converting classics and the Moomin books into easy readers, her new short story collection Live a little more and about writing short stories. She said that her short story “Min nye kille / My new boyfriend” has been widely read and has become a classic for middle school and high school. Since it was published 1993, she has every year received a lot of questions from teenagers – finding her contact details on their own – and sending questions about the short stories content, style and more.
The author Joel Berglund talked about his autobiography Vända hem / Return home, written in verse. The organizers of the author talk were very excited about this autobiography – calling it “one of the bravest ever”. It was about growing up in an atheist family with alcoholic parents and then meeting a free religious girlfriend and starting going to church, which leads to some kind of culture clash, according to the author.
The last author, Daniel Gunnarsson had written about fishing from an environmental aspect. A previous ISGR teacher’s (Jennifer Hawkins) husband had illustrated the nonfiction book very nicely.
ISGR Götaberg Library 