Lina Schollin Ask's recent debut novel was sold to publishers in eleven countries even before its Swedish publication.
I'm completely overwhelmed; I haven't fully understood it yet.
She has been working on it off and on for seven years, and was not inspired by any of her Swedish predecessors.
Fredrik Backman's world hit "A Man Called Ove" is about an embittered widower. Bo, in Lisa Ridzén's "The Cranes Are Flying South", has been alone since his wife moved into a dementia care home. Now he struggles with his son, who thinks he is too old to have a dog.
There is something appealing about these seemingly grumpy and withdrawn old men who then turn out to have such a strong inner emotional life and vulnerability, says Ridzén's agent Josephine Oxelheim at Salomonsson Agency.
Outlier
Gunnar, in Lina Schollin Ask's novel, collapses when both his wife and dog die unexpectedly. The heavy losses also awaken a previously unprocessed grief over their deceased son and all the children they never had.
Deeply depressed, Gunnar lives out his grief as a vagrant at Skogskyrkogården in Stockholm.
It is the place that is the main character for me, and then Gunnar came; I have imagined him, says Lina Schollin Ask, who herself has spent a lot of time at Skogskyrkogården.
In her first book, "Climb as high as you want, because you're already dead," she wrote autobiographically about how she and her husband's first daughter, completely healthy, died in her sleep at just one and a half years old. Lina Schollin Ask, herself a pediatrician, was unable to save her.
"I've really noticed the importance of talking to each other about grief and crisis and darkness. We've been quite open and that's helped us. We've needed other people, I really wanted to write about it and reach out to others," she says.
Pure kindness
In "Tallum's Song", she also depicts how interpersonal encounters, small gestures of kindness and spontaneous generosity have crucial significance in people's lives.
I think we need stories like this. They are probably timely in the troubled world we live in now, where superficiality, screens and war play a big role.
Perhaps Gunnar's grief and fate can also serve as a metaphor.
I wonder if he doesn't symbolize an iceberg of sadness or loneliness, where you only see the tip. Maybe that's why all three of us writers have chosen these men, to portray the iceberg more clearly.
Corrected: In a previous version, the name Salomonsson Agency was incorrect.
"A Man Called Ove" by Fredrik Backman (2012) was on the New York Times bestseller list for more than a year and has sold over eight million copies. It has been adapted into a film in Sweden with Rolf Lassgård in the lead role and in the US with Tom Hanks in the same role.
"The Cranes Are Flying South" by Lisa Ridzén (2024) is published by 44 publishers around the world.
"Tallum's Song" by Lina Schollin Ask (2026) is ready for publication in eleven countries, and negotiations for more are ongoing. Architects Gunnar Asplund and Sigurd Lewerentz called their proposal for the Forest Cemetery "Tallum." The Forest Cemetery is now a World Heritage Site.
