Avalon Recommends – The Gothenburg Book Fair 2025 Edition
With the upcoming Book Fair, we as an art and design hotel, and with our burning interest in culture, feel that we should recommend a number of Swedish books – both old and new – much like the artworks and design objects we house. This can serve well as a guide if you’re staying with us during the Book Fair, or simply as an enjoyable reading list. This year’s theme at the Book Fair: love, lust, and drama. So the books we recommend fall within that realm.
The Sisters – Jonas Hassen Khemiri (2023)
The Sisters was published in 2023 and is one of the series of books that, following Knausgård’s My Struggle, continues the trend of authors writing in the first person. It follows three sisters with Tunisian-Swedish heritage in Stockholm, as well as the author Jonas himself, who also shares this mixed heritage, and their journeys through life. The three sisters are central to Jonas in the book, and he follows them from a distance, as they barely know he exists. Every other chapter follows one of the sisters, and every other chapter follows Mr. Hassen Khemiri. Jonas’s life is dull and uneventful until the Mikkola sisters – Ina, Anastasia, and Evelyn – move into the same neighborhood as his family. The sisters become an awakening for Jonas, representing freedom and worldliness, even though it is known that their father is gone and their mother completely unhinged.
From childhood, we follow the charming Evelyn, who always gets what she wants, the stunning Anastasia, who cannot stay away from everything Stockholm’s nightlife has to offer, and the awkward bookworm Ina, who with jealousy and a self-appointed role as the sisters’ extra mother, tries to navigate their rather messy lives. The novel is like a time capsule of a Stockholm of the past, taking the reader from the 1980s to the contemporary present, painting a clear dramaturgy that largely works very well. From the suburbs to the inner city, from the city to Tunisia, the girls become women and the boy becomes a man. It is an intriguing story that, toward the end, when the fourth wall is broken and it becomes clear that Jonas has imagined everything he has written about the sisters – or rather projected what he has thought about their lives into the novel we are reading – feels rich and well-considered.
The novel is a brick, but an entertaining one that remains exciting with many twists and turns. Love is clearly important to the author, and is a central part of the entire novel. It should be noted, however, that The Sisters is a different type of book than the My Struggle series, and that this narrative approach is beginning to feel somewhat tired (less “I,” more “they”!). Still, this book is excellently written and therefore highly recommended.
The Devil’s Grip – Lina Wolff (2022)
It cannot be said that The Devil’s Grip is about love; it is rather a book about lust and obsession disguised in the sheep’s clothing of love. Lina Wolff’s novel takes place in Italy, and we are thrown straight into the life of a Swedish woman who has left her life in Stockholm for one in Italy with what we soon realize is an ugly and gigantic man. In the opening chapters, however, the man is transformed: she shaves his head, trims his beard, and his ugliness is reshaped into a masculine, animalistic power. First over himself, and then over other women who notice his newfound strength. Minnie, our protagonist, and Mickey, as they jokingly call each other, are dependent on one another and caught in each other’s grip. But power is always fluid, and soon Minnie finds that Mickey has her violently wrapped around his little finger.
The book is about the power we hold over one another and about losing control. It is about violence, both sexual and physical, and with a blend of dread and humor we follow the couple’s joint path toward destruction. It may not sound fun, but Lina Wolff finds in this dark story a self-distanced black comedy, the feeling of spiraling into a deadly carousel that is bound to explode, yet the speed and adrenaline of the ride make you smile despite it all.
The novel was nominated for the August Prize in 2022, and with good reason. It is also the perfect length and can easily be read during a central hotel stay in Gothenburg – perhaps with us at Avalon Hotel.
Wilful Disregard – Lena Andersson (2013)
Lena Andersson is an author who will in fact be present at the Book Fair in 2025, something that excites us from rooftop pool to Avalon Restaurant. On the theme of love, Wilful Disregard is a modern classic, and so we must mention it. Readers follow the poet and essayist Ester Nilsson, who after her readings and essays is asked to give a lecture on the fictional emerging artist Hugo Rask. It turns out Hugo is in the audience during the lecture, and he is overwhelmed and moved by Ester’s words about him. They begin a romantic relationship where Ester quickly finds herself subordinate to Hugo.
The novel won the August Prize the same year it was published and serves as a window into a modern romantic relationship. Text messages are sent which, to Ester, are deeply meaningful and deserving of a reply, but the perception of what the text means becomes distorted and vanishes when read at the wrong moment, in the wrong emotional state, and when interpretive authority is unchecked. Anyone who has experienced unrequited love can relate, and the novel makes you feel present in the barren winter nights and foolish decisions made in love’s name. Lena Andersson also manages to distill the novel into a surprisingly short length, but one that lingers for a long time.
The First – Marit Furn (2023)
In Marit Furn’s The First, we are schooled in manipulation and power relations, but also in what it means to be a man. Which is surprising, since Marit Furn is a woman. The book takes place in Dalarna, where a once prominent cultural journalist from Stockholm has bought a cottage.
As in this novel, the reader is tossed between two narratives: one from the protagonist Erik’s childhood, adolescence, and adult life in Stockholm, and one set in the present day in Dalarna. Erik has chosen to move because his career is on the decline, and he claims he “wants a break.” Instead, he becomes entangled in a local drama between himself and Ture, one of the village leaders and chairman of the local theater association. Erik, through local gossip (which we’ll let you discover for yourselves), manages to have Ture ousted from his role and stages his own play about Gustav Vasa, where Erik naturally plays the leading role.
The novel explores and satirizes cultural men and offers gripping depictions of what masculinity and power are. Each chapter begins with a quotation from Machiavelli’s The Prince, giving readers tips on how to acquire and maintain power. We also follow local life in Dalarna, and how Sweden of the past and Sweden today are not all that far apart. One is impressed by Marit Furn’s accuracy in capturing what I had previously considered to be exclusively male feelings. The First was very well received by critics – and by us at Avalon.
With this, we hope you enjoy the Book Fair if you attend, and if not, that you still take away some tips for this year’s reading.
TO THE BOOK FAIR 2025