We have seen The way back, starring Ed Harris, Colin Farrell and Gustav Skarsgård among others. As the film begins, we are thrown into a dirty and cold labour camp in Siberia during World War II. Most of the prisoners are sentenced to ten or twenty years of hard labour and some of them decide that they would rather die as free men than break down in captivity.
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The Red Room and The Wonderful Voyage of Nils Holgersson are just two literary representations of Sweden. Follow the books around our elongated country and visit its well-trodden cities and paths. From the back of a goose, Nils Holgersson saw the whole of Sweden, from Skåne with its patchwork of fields to Kebnekaise. If you want to visit another classic children's book setting, you should visit Astrid Lindgren's Katthult in Lönneberga outside Vimmerby.
Read moreIn the Danish film Revengeby Susanne Bier, Mikael Persbrandt plays a doctor trying to patch up dismembered women in a broken Africa. Back home in Denmark, the divorce is about to become a fact while the bullied son finally finds a mate.
Read moreThe Book Thief, by Markus Zusak, is a different book in many ways. The story is narrated by Death and is set in Nazi Germany, but as if Nazi Germany is just something going on in the background. If you are a nine-year-old girl, you have nothing to compare it to and Nazi Germany is quite normal.
Read morePurge, by Sofi Oksanen, is a literary masterpiece. Every now and then you meet writers who can master the language, but mastering the narrative is an art. In this book we meet an old woman in the Estonian countryside. She chases flies and makes pickles. Suddenly she sees a bundle in the garden - is it a person?
Read moreIf there's one group of people we're prejudiced against, it's the gypsies, isn't it? That is why it is particularly interesting to read the book Bury Me Standing. Isabel Fonseca is an American journalist who has lived with gypsies in Eastern Europe and has made a serious attempt to understand their history.
Read moreNow I have finally read "Campingland" by Josefin Olevik. It must be admitted that it is completely wrong season for a book about camping in summer Sweden, but it has been lying around since last summer.
Read moreWith books you can travel to places you would otherwise never go. This time: Chechnya. What drives Åsne Seierstad, a 24-year-old newly graduated journalist, to hitchhike on a military plane from Moscow to the war in Chechnya? Perhaps more foolhardy than brave, but it is fascinating!
Read moreIn the book "Nobody in the World", Hisham Matar takes the reader to a country where no other book has taken me: Libya. Suleiman grows up in Tripoli in the 1970s, under the Gaddafi regime. It is a totalitarian state, where your neighbour can be an "antenna".
Read moreWe love adventure, but some adventures are best experienced in book form. Climbing K2 is such an adventure. In 'K2 on life and death', Fredrik Sträng describes the 2008 expedition to K2, when eleven climbers lost their lives. You do wonder why they put themselves through this, but it is also fascinating to follow them up the mountain.
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