On August 28, Fredrik Backman's new novel "Mina vänner" will be released in Sweden, but the book has been published for several months in English in the USA, Canada, and the United Kingdom.
The reason is that Backman lacked a Swedish publisher, while he is a literary superstar, especially on the American market where his books have regularly been high on the sales lists ever since the breakthrough with "En man som heter Ove"
And the success continues. The latest book has, among other things, been chosen as "the book of the autumn" in the book club in the popular talk show "Tonight show" on American TV.
Now it will be Norstedts that publishes the book in Sweden. But thanks to the attention in the USA, Swedish readers have also ordered the book in English, notes Adam Dahlin, publisher and literary director at Norstedts.
It's a risk, a gamble. We do not know if the English edition would take focus even here and readers would choose to read it, or that we would end up in the backwater, he says to Sveriges Radio's "Kulturnytt".
