Literature from Nordic countries

[snakeling]

I've been on a Nordic literature streak, lately, and I'm looking for more authors/books. :)

I'm especially interested in literature from Denmark and Iceland, but Norwegian, Swedish and Finnish literatures are welcome too. Only books that have been translated to English and/or French, though, because I can't read anything else.

Please tell me a few words about the book/author you recommend, and why you loved it (or why you hated it; I'm also taking anti-recs *g*).

Comments

[st_aurafina]

You might want to check out kattahj - she recs a lot of Swedish young adult fiction.

I loved Peter Høeg's Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow. There's a movie based on the book, which is good, but vastly different to the novel.

[kathmandu]

I read that under the title Smilla's Sense of Snow. I strongly disliked it because the ending is far less resolved than the beginning, and i feel that stories ought to work the other way around.

off the top of my head...

[rhoda]

I can also recommend Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow.

Jostein Gaarder's Sophie's World and The Solitaire Mystery were my favourite books in my teens. He writes about Western philosophy. I love his characters, especially in the second one. As for children's literature in general, I think you can't beat Astrid Lindgren. She is just wonderful.

If you're into genre fiction, check out Johanna Sinisalo. I've read one novel of hers, Not Before Sundown. She plays around with Finnish folklore and myth in a contemporary setting.

As far as I know, these have all been translated into English (except maybe for Astrid Lindgren, whose body of work is so large).

Re: off the top of my head...

[anotherdream]

I second Sinisalo. She's one of our leading scifi/speculative fiction writers, and damn good at it. Not Before Sundown won the Finlandia prize (just about the most valued literature prize in Finland), and it was her first full-length novel to boot. The American English translation is titled Troll: A Love Story, IIRC. At this time I don't believe the rest of her writing has been translated, though she was editor for an English-language anthology of Finnish scifi/fantasy a few years back.

Re: off the top of my head...

[rhoda]

Ah right, they changed the title. Sorry! :)

Re: off the top of my head...

[anotherdream]

Technically, no. There are two English translations: one for the UK, one for the US. AFAIK they are entirely different translations, by different publishers, so they also have different names. (The US one, incidentally, is ridiculous.)

[kyoutenshi]

Not really sure if it counts as 'literature' per se, but there's a very interesting YA series called the Shamer series by a woman named Lene Kaaberbol. It's a medieval fantasy series, made of four book about a young girl whose family have the genetic ability to make a person face up to all the wrongs they've committed in their lives, just by looking them in the eyes. It's been a few years since I read it,but at the time, I really enjoyed the books, and while they can be slightly typical in some aspects, there are enough fresh ideas to keep it intruiging.