The translator's choice

Caesaria by Hanna Nordenhök

I think it is high time to introduce Hanna Nordenhök’s writing to the Spanish-speaking world. She began as a poet, wrote essays, and became one of the best-read young literary critics. Her two novels, The Aspens and Caesaria, form a diptych due to their thematic relationship, and have given her a prominent position in contemporary Swedish literature.

The name ‘Caesaria’, included in a footnote of a thesis about one of the first caesareans performed in Sweden, caught Nordenhök’s eye and inspired her to write a story that reclaims the literary tradition of the legend. At the start of the book the narrator guides us two hundred years back in time to events that partly take place in a forest and partly in the library of a remote manor house. In the first sentence there is already a hint of tension between captivity and escape: “It was whilst Bedan and I went to the woods”. The domed face of the manor house’s wall clock becomes the symbol for the authority, watchfulness and powerlessness that underpin the book. It also gives a rapid – and at the same time static – pulse to the story.

Hanna Nordenhök’s poetic language, woven into an archaic register, infuses both ‘Lilltuna’ (the place where the legend takes shape) and the descriptions of the characters with life. Through either knowledge or lack thereof the different characters come to embody loneliness in a paradoxical and brutally shared dependency. Everything becomes an allegory for the patriarchy, where the author highlights different complex aspects of the way power is exercised: ambiguous answers, limiting freedom of movement, and the demand for submission.

The language, steeped in experiences of Nordic nature, pastoral life, care for animals and the regular, yet always miraculous, seasonal changes, captures the readers attention and turns the reading into an exquisite, sensuous adventure.

About the translator

Ángela García was born in Colombia, but is currently working in Malmö as a poet, translator and cultural instigator. She has published nine collections of poetry and several translations, for example of Maria Gripe, Magnus W. Olsson, Jasim Mohamed, Lasse Söderberg and Bruno K. Öjier. She is presently in charge of the World Poetry Day in Malmö and is working on the translation of an anthology of Swedish poetry into Spanish. Her three latest poetry collections are: Och vi reser oss i den nya dagen, 2018, Kropp framför spegeln, 2019, and Duologer, 2020.

Hanna Nordenhök (b. 1977)

Works

• Hiatus, poetry, 2007
• Det vita huset i Simpang, novel, 2013
• Asparna, novel, 2017

Awards                                              

• Göteborgs-Postens litteraturpris 2013
• Samfundet De Nios julpris 2014
• Sveriges Radios romanpris 2021

The book

Ceasaria, novel, 2020, 243 p.

Publisher

Norstedts

Rights

Norstedts Agency