Peter Mosskin is the author of more than a dozen books, including works dealing with the student revolution of the 1960s; texts about Jacques Brel and the Swedish folk singer Cornelis Vreeswijk, demonstrating Mosskin’s lifelong interest in music; travel writings; and a group of novels. The excerpt presented is the …

Rose Lagercrantz was born in 1947 in Stockholm. She published her first work, Tullesommar (Tulle’s summer), in 1973, taught at the Children’s Theater at Medborgarhus in Södermalm until 1987, and has worked in radio and television. While probably best known as an author of sensitive and provocative literature for children …

I am a scoundrel, said Asp. I am a scoundrel with a sensitive conscience. It’s only scoundrels, by the way, who have a sensitive conscience, because they’re always pricking it with their villainy till it’s tender. You have no idea what I can get up to. And what self-reproach I’m …

During the so-called Kristallnacht on November 9, 1938, a few months after I landed in Sweden, the Nazis wrecked all the Jewish stores, plundered them, and burned down the synagogues. All the Jewish men were sent to concentration camps. My father landed in Dachau. He rarely talked about what he …

Joachim Israel was born in Germany in 1920 and spent his teenage years in Nazi Germany, planning to move to Palestine as soon as possible. In 1938 he was allowed to go to Sweden with an agricultural work permit. By 1946 he was able to publish his first book in …

The fragrance from the orange groves when they’re in blossom is the sweetest thing in the world, Motti thinks. Reaches all the way to the sea. In the winter the sea is quiet, doesn’t roar as it does in the summer. They called the winter sea Olja. As boys they …

Anita Goldman was born in 1953 to parents who had fled to Sweden in 1943. She grew up in a Jewish home in Göteborg, Sweden’s second city. ‘My sister and I were the only ones in the school who were dark and looked different,’ she has written. When she was …

It is a fine summer day in Stockholm. The afternoon sun, mirrored in the waters of Lake Mälaren, blinds the passers-by and brings perspiration to the foreheads of the panting cyclists. No one seems to be in a hurry as they cross the bridge. The only sound is the gentle …

Hédi Fried was born in 1924 in Sighet, a part of Romania that became Hungarian in 1940. In 1944 she was deported to Auschwitz, and she was freed from Bergen-Belsen on April 15, 1945. In July 1945 the Swedish Red Cross transported her to Sweden, where she went on to …

Rebecka grew up and became a beauty. Thick, dark hair and regular features, petite and cute. In the photos I have seen I seem to sense a sensuality and sadness. But they were taken later, much later. As a girl, she must have been charming and ready to laugh. Quite …