Susanne Levin was born in Uppsala in 1950 and still lives in her native city, where she is a teacher. Her first novel, Leva vidare (Live on), the story of a young Jewish girl’s search to find an identity in postwar Sweden in the wake of the Holocaust, was published in 1994. This was followed by a continuation of the search in Som min egen (Like my own) two years later. Tillbaka till Kiraly utca (Return to Kiraly Street, 2000) is the chronicle of her return with her mother to the mother’s homeland in Hungary. Skriver dig till liv igen (Write yourself back to life) appeared in 2003. The excerpt is from her 1998 novel Suggen i domen (The sow in the cathedral), the tide of which refers to the anti-Semitic medieval statue still to be found in Uppsala Cathedral. With its strong autobiographical flavor, this story follows the problems encountered by a Jewish family in Uppsala in the course of the twentieth century. The quote near the end about love going through the world is from Gustav Geijer’s ‘Natthimmelen’ (Night sky), a familiar poem in Sweden. Levin has been married for thirty years and has two adopted children.