English Translations of Scandinavian/Nordic Mysteries & Thrillers discussion
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February 2022 - read-along
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by Lars Svendsen to be published on the 27th of February 2022. Norway.From lying to friends to lies in politics, a wide-ranging examination of the forms and ethics of falsehood.
From popular philosopher Lars Svendsen, this book is a comprehensive investigation of lying in everyday life. What exactly is a lie, Svendsen asks, and how does lying differ from related phenomena, such as “bullshit” or being truthful? Svendsen also investigates the ethics of lying—why is lying almost always morally wrong, and why is lying to one’s friends especially bad? The book concludes by looking at lying in politics, from Plato’s theory of the “noble lie” to the Big Lie of Donald Trump.
As phrases like “fake news” and “alternative facts” permeate our feeds, Svendsen’s conclusion is perhaps a surprising one: that, even though we all occasionally lie, we are for the most part trustworthy. Trusting others makes one vulnerable, and we will all be duped from time to time. But all things considered, Svendsen contends, truthfulness and vulnerability are preferable to living in a constant state of distrust.
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While convalescing in her hospital bed, Constable Petra Jensen is given a Polaroid photo of a traditional Inuit tattoo and encouraged to track down the artist who made it.
The Boreal Tattoo is the thirteenth in the Greenland Missing Persons series of novellas and novels set in the harsh, unpredictable Arctic, rich in tradition, myth and culture.
The Boreal Tattoo continues the adventures of Constable Petra ‘Piitalaat’ Jensen, ably assisted by interesting characters, together with a few familiar faces making cameo appearances in the series.
The Greenland Missing Persons stories are set prior to The Ice Star and Seven Graves, One Winter.
This special Kickstarter edition introduces a new character: Eva Møller.
and 2) "The American Artisan" published on the 26th of Febeuary 2022. Greenland.
When ghosts from an old case haunt an American artist as he walks the streets of Nuuk, Constable David Maratse is recalled to Greenland’s capital to investigate.
The American Artisan is the twenty-third in a series of novellas to feature Constable David Maratse in Greenland. Each novella is set during Maratse’s career as a police constable, and features aspects of Greenlandic culture, tradition, and not least the stunning natural environment.
Constable David Maratse also features in the popular Greenland Crime series starting with Seven Graves, One Winter, and makes regular cameo appearances in the Greenland Missing Persons series.
This special Kickstarter edition introduces a new character: David ‘Dave’ Bennett.
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by Magnus Lassgard published on the 6th of February 2022. Sweden.“They sawed off his arms and legs? With a hedge trimmer? Are you kidding?"
They're not.
When Gunnar Sundberg finds a dead man in the creek, his arm is severed at the shoulder, bones protruding from the bloody flesh wound, indicating that someone must have died a cruel and slow death here. The tracks show that he was carrying his own arm when he escaped - he must have still had both legs then....
One of the smartest serial killers with a peculiar sense of justice is driving the team of Alva Bergqvist and Majken Lund. The man is so adaptive to his surroundings that he can almost melt with the forests around the little Swedish town Stinarsund. But wherever he reappears, it is cruel, brutal and painful. And the deeper they dive into the investigation the more obvious it gets: There must be a political dimension to the killings…
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Irish-American lawyer Jeff Scott arrives in Munich in the autumn of 2015 with one goal – to get custody of his six-year-old daughter, Tania. Determined to stop him is wealthy industrialist Marius Lindauer, now married to Tania’s mother and leader of Germany’s largest far-right political party.
When Scott is arrested while attempting to enter the Lindauer farm where he believes Tania to be, he makes an unlikely ally of Kommissarin Gretchen Caberletti, who is hunting a serial killer of Muslim businessmen. Her investigation turns the Lindauer family into a deadly enemy.
Meanwhile in Denmark, Carsten Bjornson, now in his nineties, wants to set the record straight about his role in an act of treachery against a wealthy Jewish family just when Hitler had signed a decree to deport the Danish Jews. But he is equally determined to reveal the connivance of Marius Lindauer’s father, an SS officer stationed in Copenhagen during the war.
Chased by Lindauer’s murderous thugs, Scott and Gretchen flee to Denmark to find Bjornson and expose the Lindauers’ dark secrets.
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The perfect man.
The perfect life.
The only problem is the dead body on the beach.
Investigative reporter Ellie has just given up her life in London to be with the man of her dreams in Sweden when she stumbles across a half decomposed skeleton on Midsummer’s eve.
She’s flung into a murder investigation in a country where she doesn’t speak the language and doesn’t know a soul.
Except Johan.
The love of her life.
Who she is beginning to suspect knows a lot more about the body than he is admitting.
Is he the perfect man, or has Ellie uncovered the perfect crime?
A psychological suspense thriller with a twist of Scandi noir - perfect for fans of The Girl on the Train, Gone Girl and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.
English Translations of Scandinavian/Nordic...
Books mentioned in this topic
A Philosophy of Lying (other topics)The Last Wild Horses (other topics)
Extreme North: A Cultural History (other topics)
The Bear of Byzantium (other topics)
Secrets of the Sprakkar: Iceland's Extraordinary Women and How They Are Changing the World (other topics)
More...
Authors mentioned in this topic
CS Duffy (other topics)Richard Maguire (other topics)
Magnus Lassgard (other topics)
Lars Fredrik Händler Svendsen (other topics)
Maja Lunde (other topics)
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1) Cold as Hell
Icelandic sisters Áróra and Ísafold live in different countries and aren't on speaking terms, but when their mother loses contact with Ísafold, Áróra reluctantly returns to Iceland to find her sister. But she soon realizes that her sister isn't avoiding her … she has disappeared, without trace.
As she confronts Ísafold's abusive, drug-dealing boyfriend Björn, and begins to probe her sister's reclusive neighbours – who have their own reasons for staying out of sight – Áróra is led into an ever-darker web of intrigue and manipulation.
Baffled by the conflicting details of her sister's life, and blinded by the shiveringly bright midnight sun of the Icelandic summer, Áróra enlists the help of police officer Daníel, as she tries to track her sister's movements, and begins to tail Björn – but she isn't the only one watching…
2) The Employees
A workplace novel of the 22nd century
The near-distant future. Millions of kilometres from Earth.
The crew of the Six-Thousand ship consists of those who were born, and those who were created. Those who will die, and those who will not. When the ship takes on a number of strange objects from the planet New Discovery, the crew is perplexed to find itself becoming deeply attached to them, and human and humanoid employees alike find themselves longing for the same things: warmth and intimacy. Loved ones who have passed. Our shared, far-away Earth, which now only persists in memory.
Gradually, the crew members come to see themselves in a new light, and each employee is compelled to ask themselves whether their work can carry on as before – and what it means to be truly alive.
Structured as a series of witness statements compiled by a workplace commission, Ravn’s crackling prose is as chilling as it is moving, as exhilarating as it is foreboding. Wracked by all kinds of longing, The Employees probes into what it means to be human, emotionally and ontologically, while simultaneously delivering an overdue critique of a life governed by work and the logic of productivity.
3) Museum of Hidden Beings: A Guide to Icelandic Creatures of Myth and Legend
Iceland, a country of striking and sometimes surreal beauty, is matched by its rich and extensive folklore. Since time immemorial, Icelanders have told tales of strange encounters and experiences they have had while on their travels. From the extraordinary Finngálkn, a halfbreed of man and beast to the Kráki, a giant octopus that preys on trawlers and oil rigs, Icelandic folklore is riddled with fantastic tales that expound natural phenomenon and circumstance with peculiar supernatural creatures from myth and legend. Take these tales, passed down from generation to generation throughout the centuries, make with them what you will and share them again. First published in Iceland as Duldýrasafnið, The Museum of Hidden Beings is now available in English, worldwide, so that the creatures of Icelandic legend might knock on new doors. Part of the Wool of Bat series focused on the preservation and promotion of folklore and oral history from around the world.
4) Secrets of the Sprakkar: Iceland's Extraordinary Women and How They Are Changing the World
The Canadian first lady of Iceland pens a book about why this tiny nation is leading the charge in gender equality, in the vein of The Moment of Lift.
Iceland is the best place on earth to be a woman—but why?
For the past twelve years, the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report has ranked Iceland number one on its list of countries closing the gap in equality between men and women. What is it about Iceland that enables its society to make such meaningful progress in this ongoing battle, from electing the world’s first female president to passing legislation specifically designed to help even the playing field at work and at home?
The answer is found in the country’s sprakkar, an ancient Icelandic word meaning extraordinary or outstanding women.
Eliza Reid—Canadian born and raised, and now first lady of Iceland—examines her adopted homeland’s attitude toward women: the deep-seated cultural sense of fairness, the influence of current and historical role models, and, crucially, the areas where Iceland still has room for improvement. Throughout, she interviews dozens of sprakkar to tell their inspirational stories, and expertly weaves in her own experiences as an immigrant from small-town Canada. The result is an illuminating discussion of what it means to move through the world as a woman and how the rules of society play more of a role in who we view as equal than we may understand.
What makes many women’s experiences there so positive? And what can we learn about fairness to benefit our society?
Like influential and progressive first ladies Eleanor Roosevelt, Hillary Rodham Clinton, and Michelle Obama, Reid uses her platform to bring the best of her nation to the world. Secrets of the Sprakkar is a powerful and atmospheric portrait of a tiny country that could lead the way forward for us all.
5) The Bear of Byzantium
The wolves of Odin sail to the centre of the world: Constantinople.
AD 1041. After successfully avenging the death of his father, Halfdan and the crew of the Sea Wolf seek adventure in strange new lands, far from their Scandinavian home.
They join the fleet of Harald Hardrada, the legendary Viking commander, sailing back to Constantinople from the battlefields of Georgia. There they join the Varangians, the personal bodyguard of the Byzantine Emperors populated almost exclusively by Viking warriors. But Constantinople has changed during Hardrada’s long absence.
The Emperor, Michael IV, is ailing visibly, and powerful factions in his court are setting their plans in motion ahead of his inevitable demise. While courtiers scheme, elements even within the Varangian Guard are picking sides.
Gunnhild, the seer among the Sea Wolf crew, has struck out on her own in the big city. Unable to join the all-male Guard alongside her friends, she establishes herself in a small side-street near the port as a healer and soothsayer, offering cures to the sick and glimpses of the future to the desperate, or the conspiratorial. But in all her visions she sees a wolf, a boar and a golden bear fighting together to support the Byzantine throne. The Norns aren’t finished with them yet…
The epic second instalment in the Wolves of Odin series, taking us to the heart of power in Constantinople and the desperate machinations of the Byzantine emperors. Perfect for fans of Bernard Cornwell, Giles Kristian and Angus Donald.
6) Extreme North: A Cultural History
Scholars and laymen alike have long projected their fantasies onto the great expanse of the global North, whether it be as a frozen no-man’s-land, an icy realm of marauding Vikings, or an unspoiled cradle of prehistoric human life. Bernd Brunner reconstructs the encounters of adventurers, colonists, and indigenous communities that led to the creation of a northern "cabinet of wonders" and imbued Scandinavia, Iceland, and the Arctic with a perennial mystique.
Like the mythological sagas that inspired everyone from Wagner to Tolkien, Extreme North explores both the dramatic vistas of the Scandinavian fjords and the murky depths of a Western psyche obsessed with Nordic whiteness. In concise but thoroughly researched chapters, Brunner highlights the cultural and political fictions at play from the first "discoveries" of northern landscapes and stories, to the eugenicist elevation of the "Nordic" phenotype (which in turn influenced America’s limits on immigration), to the idealization of Scandinavian social democracy as a post-racial utopia. Brunner traces how crackpot Nazi philosophies that tied the "Aryan race" to the upper latitudes have influenced modern pseudoscientific fantasies of racial and cultural superiority the world over.
The North, Brunner argues, was as much invented as discovered. Full of glittering details embedded in vivid storytelling, Extreme North is a fascinating romp through both actual encounters and popular imaginings, and a disturbing reminder of the power of fantasy to shape the world we live in.
7) The Last Wild Horses
Translated into 36 languages, winner of the Norwegian Bookseller’s Prize, and the most successful Norwegian author of her generation, Maja Lunde returns with a heart-wrenching tale, set in the distant past and the dystopian future, about extinction and survival, family and hope.
Mikhail lives in Russia in 1881. When a skeleton of a rare wild horse is brought to him, the zoologist plans an expedition to Mongolia to find the fabled Przewalski horse, a journey that tests not only his physicality, but his heart.In 1992, Karin, alongside her troubled son Mathias and several Przewalski horses, travels to Mongolia to re-introduce the magnificent horses to their native land. The veterinarian has dedicated her life to saving the breed from extinction, prioritizing the wild horses, even over her own son.
Europe’s future is uncertain in 2064, but Eva is willing to sacrifice nearly everything to hold onto her family’s farm. Her teenage daughter implores Eva to leave the farm and Norway, but a pregnant wild mare Eva is tending is about to foal. Then, a young woman named Louise unexpectedly arrives on the farm, with mysterious intentions that will either bring them all together, or devastate them one by one.
Spanning continents and centuries, The Last Wild Horses is a powerful tale of survival and connection—of humans, animals, and the indestructible bonds that unite us all.