{"id":3828,"date":"2019-09-18T15:44:47","date_gmt":"2019-09-18T14:44:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/prosefest.rs\/?p=3828"},"modified":"2020-09-03T08:13:42","modified_gmt":"2020-09-03T07:13:42","slug":"steve-sem-sandberg","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/prosefest.rs\/en\/2019\/ucesnici-2019\/steve-sem-sandberg\/","title":{"rendered":"Steve Sem-Sandberg"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

Steve Sem-Sandberg<\/b><\/span><\/span><\/span> (b. 1958) divides his time between Vienna and Stockholm. He has won a number of literary awards (such as <\/span><\/span><\/span>the August Prize<\/i><\/span><\/span><\/span> in 2009, <\/span><\/span><\/span>the Aftonbladet Literary Award<\/i><\/span><\/span><\/span> and <\/span><\/span><\/span>the De Nios Grand Award<\/i><\/span><\/span><\/span>) and has been shortlisted for the prestigious <\/span><\/span><\/span>Nordic Council Literary Award<\/i><\/span><\/span><\/span> on two occasions. His trilogy on three women (Milena Jesensk\u00e1, Ulrike Meinhof and Lou Andreas Salom\u00e9) in the 20th century won great acclaim in Scandinavia. <\/span><\/span><\/span>H\u00e4rifr\u00e5n till allm\u00e4nningen<\/b><\/i><\/span><\/span><\/span> (From Here to the Great Commons)<\/b><\/i><\/span><\/span><\/span>, published in 2005 and set during the interesting period between 1965 and 1975, has received outstanding reviews. He is often regarded as one of the most interesting authors to arise from Scandinavia during this past decade. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

His critically acclaimed and powerful novel, <\/span><\/span><\/span>De fattiga i Lodz<\/b><\/i><\/span><\/span><\/span> (<\/span><\/span><\/span>The Destitutes of Lodz<\/b><\/i><\/span><\/span><\/span>) was published in September 2009 and has been sold to over twenty countries in major deals and has been awarded <\/span><\/span><\/span>The August Prize<\/i><\/span><\/span><\/span> in 2009.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The novel <\/span><\/span><\/span>Chosen (De utvalda, 2014)<\/b><\/i><\/span><\/span><\/span> <\/i>has received similar critical acclaim. He has been awarded <\/span><\/span><\/span>the Prix Medicis<\/i><\/span><\/span><\/span> in France for the best translated novel in 2016, as well as <\/span><\/span><\/span>Prix Transfuge<\/i><\/span><\/span><\/span> for the best European novel.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

His latest novel <\/span><\/span><\/span>The Tempest<\/b><\/i><\/span><\/span><\/span> (Stormen) <\/i><\/span><\/span><\/span>was published in<\/span><\/span><\/span> <\/i>2016.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

In 2018 he was awarded a scholarship from the foundation <\/span><\/span><\/span>Natur & Kultur<\/i><\/span><\/span><\/span>, for great literary contributions.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Stiv-Sem-Sandberg-photo-by-Stefan-Tell\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

About the novel <\/span><\/span><\/span>The Chosen Ones <\/b><\/i><\/span><\/span>(De Utvalda)<\/i><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Like the novel, \u201cThe Emperor of Lies\u201d, that came before it, \u201cThe Chosen Ones\u201d is a polyphonic story, located between the historical and the fictitious. Steve Sem-Sandberg takes us so close to the children that were sacrificed for the Nazi ideology of preserving the Aryan race. This very strong novel rests heavily on thorough and rigorous research work. Through brilliant writing, the author makes us live through the same story as his characters while witnessing the atrocities of the treatments they had to endure. This moving book is for reading and never forgetting. Nobody can come out unscathed after reading this novel that honours the children tortured during the Second World War.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

R\u00e9daction Viabooks<\/b><\/i><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Like his previous novel, \u2018The Emperor of Lies*, which described life in the Lodz Ghetto, Sem-Sandberg\u2019s new book is also documented strongly. But at the same time the writer has coloured the facts, to give a voice to the voiceless victims of history. In this he has succeeded brilliantly. He portrays the hard lives of children who were doomed in advance because of their ethnicity and health. Sem-Sandberg\u2019s detailed account of life in this closed Nazi microcosm is a chilling monument.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Trouw<\/b><\/i><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The old truth about reality being stranger and more horrible than fiction comes into force in Steve Sem-Sandberg\u2019s new documentary novel. What makes \u2018The Chosen Ones\u2019 great \u2013 besides its literary qualities \u2013 is its expansion of the history we already know.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Carin Elisabeth Beddari, <\/b><\/i><\/span><\/span>Morgenbladet<\/i><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

A master in the art of empathy<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Because what this novel manages to achieve in the first 550 pages is to capture the reader in a vise of merciless credibility, where the author\u2019s empathy for the most crippling pain, the most bottomless humiliation, the most chaotic helplessness calls out a despair and a powerless anger that makes our cozy living room walls vibrate with shame and guilt, 70 years later[\u2026]<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Steve Sem-Sandberg\u2019s latest novel cannot, in authenticity, measure up to the self-experienced testimonies that Nazism\u2019s victims convey. But I know of no other contemporary author anywhere in the world who, with such a symbiotically congenial and hallucinatory sensory transmission, succeeds in portraying the tormented\u2019s experiences to the innermost core of that pain.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Nils Schwartz, <\/b><\/i><\/span><\/span>Dagens Nyheter<\/i><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Steve Sem-Sandberg is undoubtedly one of the leading European writers. His novel <\/span><\/span><\/span>The Emperor of Lies <\/i><\/span><\/span><\/span>has expanded his renown outside the borders of Sweden and earned him major European awards. It also defined the author as a writer whose thematic interest focuses on the Holocaust and suffering of the innocent during World War II. (\u2026)<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The Chosen Ones <\/i><\/span><\/span><\/span>speaks about a hospital in Spiegelgrund where the Nazis locked those who were \u201cracially impure\u201d on various bases: mentally ill, of different sexual orientation, or not Arian enough (…) <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Sem-Sandberg\u2019s novel is magnificent. Exciting and horrifying, thrilling and wild, evil and gut-wrenching, just like any great literature is supposed to be. In it, there is no room for pathetic and fake sappy emotions; that is why the author refers to documents in order to show us that the text is not a figment of imagination, but that it was the way it happened, and we are involved one way or the other. Because the very act of reading this kind of prose must provoke some kind of a response from us; it must, if possible, following the classical Aristotelian formula, cleanse us from pity and fear and make us aware of the potential for evil and good that we have and that we have to exercise every day. Because we have been chosen.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Vladimir Arseni\u0107<\/b><\/i><\/span><\/span><\/span>, from the afterword<\/i><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

About<\/span><\/span><\/span> the<\/span><\/span><\/span> novel<\/span><\/span><\/span> The<\/b><\/i><\/span><\/span><\/span> <\/b><\/i>Tempest<\/b><\/i><\/span><\/span><\/span> (<\/span><\/span><\/span>Stormen<\/i><\/span><\/span><\/span>)<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

On a small island off the coast of Norway, late 1990s. Andreas is going over the estate after his late foster father, Johannes. Amidst the clutter he finds the tale of the island\u2019s past: the truth about the State Councilor in the Quisling government who allowed the island to become a colony for poor children; the story of the parents who went missing during suspicious circumstances, and about Andreas\u2019 sister Minna, who has left him alone with guilt impossible to atone.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Steve Sem-sandberg\u2019s new novel is a hypnotic tale of an island, overrun with stories and myths. The Tempest portrays a hatefulness that is inherited generation after generation and a love that will conquer all.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The book thrums with building intensity, the writing deceptive in its simplicity but with a hypnotic rhythm and cadence which echoes the novel\u2019s dreamlike exploration of the past, of the shadows which loom. With harmonies and discords to Shakespeare\u2019s play, it expresses the power of nature in its beauty and cruelty, how there are monsters which lurk within and how myth and legend build their own kind truth. Most of all it questions our own understanding of what has gone before: <\/span><\/span><\/span>That something is closely remembered does not always mean you recognise the reality of it<\/i><\/span><\/span><\/span>.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Ruth Mckee<\/b><\/i><\/span><\/span><\/span>, Irish Times<\/i><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Sinister mysteries thicken and swirl like the island\u2019s mist as this densely atmospheric novel progresses, culminating in a conclusion that avoids easy answers.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Daily Mail<\/b><\/i><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

This is a novel about the way historical crimes are written on a landscape, about the manner in which moral decay takes on physical form. What makes The Tempest truly special, though, is the risks that Sem-Sandberg takes with narrative conventions, the way that his prose seems to break every rule in the creative writing handbook, and yet does so joyfully, recklessly and utterly convincingly. That such stylistic complexity is rendered in a manner that feels entirely natural is testimony to the great skill of the translator, Anna Paterson. The prose leaps wilfully between past and present tenses, the voice suddenly breaks into the second person and at one point Johannes takes over Andreas\u2019s first-person narrative. Perspectives telescope in and out, giving us sweeping passages of history or wide-angle landscapes followed by intimately observed and close-up moments in time. It\u2019s as if the book\u2019s most significant borrowing from Shakespeare\u2019s play is not the island setting, but rather Prospero\u2019s total control of narrative, the omnipotence of the author-magician.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The Spectator<\/b><\/i><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Steve Sem-Sandberg\u2019s name is printed in gold on the cover of <\/span><\/span><\/span>The Tempest<\/i><\/span><\/span><\/span>. This is hardly a coincidence, he is a golden writer and his writing absolutely sparkles. [\u2026] I want to highlight Sem-Sandberg\u2019s sharp eye for intricate psychology, his ability to depict the goodness metamorphosis to the subtle evil, the irresponsible egotism\u2019s destructive force. And to turn all of this into mighty and moving storytelling.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Tommy Sundin<\/b><\/i><\/span><\/span><\/span>, V\u00e4sterbottens Kuriren<\/i><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Steve Sem-Sandberg (b. 1958) divides his time between Vienna and Stockholm. He has won a number of literary awards (such as the August Prize in 2009, the Aftonbladet Literary Award and the De Nios Grand Award) and has been shortlisted for the prestigious Nordic Council Literary Award on two occasions. His trilogy on three women […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3821,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[101],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3828","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ucesnici-2019"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/prosefest.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3828","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/prosefest.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/prosefest.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prosefest.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prosefest.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3828"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/prosefest.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3828\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3838,"href":"https:\/\/prosefest.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3828\/revisions\/3838"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prosefest.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3821"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/prosefest.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3828"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prosefest.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3828"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prosefest.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3828"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}