Here is a book tip that is also a film tip. Li Cunxin grows up as a poor peasant boy in communist China. His family barely has enough food for the day, but he learns early on that, thanks to Chairman Mao, he lives in the richest country in the world. Imagine how terrible the people in the capitalist world must be!
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Peter read Three Seconds in the summer of 2009. I remember exactly when he opened the first page. We were on the ferry between Ystad and Swinoujscie at the time, heading down to Europe with the camper van. After just a few lines, he looked up and asked "What is the name of this boat?".
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Even silence has an end is Ingrid Betancourt's account of her time in the hands of the FARC guerrillas. For six years, the French-Colombian politician was a prisoner in the Colombian jungle. This is a book that kept me hooked from the first page to the last.
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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.
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The 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.
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Purge, 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?
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If 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.
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Now 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.
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With 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!
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In 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".
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