Reading Tomas Tranströmer.

Reading Tomas Tranströmer.

Reading Tomas Tranströmer. Tomas Tranströmer’s poems won’t leave you alone. They’re dark, infused with dread, but also shot through with light, as when, nearby, a string quartet plays Schubert.So much we have to trust to be able to live our daily day without sinking...
Before Fylgia (3).

Before Fylgia (3).

Before Fylgia (3). Before Fylgia, there was another story, compiled during my visits to Sweden. Many of my readers have asked about it, and so I decided to post it here. This is the third installment. Not yet fiction, it occupies a realm of its own. Carl was not the...
Before Fylgia (2).

Before Fylgia (2).

Before Fylgia (2). Before Fylgia, there was another story, compiled during my visits to Sweden. Many of my readers have asked about it, and so I decided to post it here. This is the second installment. Not yet fiction, it occupies a realm of its own. They say when God...
Before Fylgia (1).

Before Fylgia (1).

Before Fylgia (1). Before Fylgia, there was another story, compiled during my visits to Sweden. Many of my readers have asked about it, and so I decided to post it here. This is the first installment. Not yet fiction, it occupies a realm of its own.How It Began.In the...
Horse Meat in Sweden. Its Troubled Past.

Horse Meat in Sweden. Its Troubled Past.

Horse Meat in Sweden. Its Troubled Past. Dead horses hang from a giant tree. Blood drips from their lacerated flesh. Below, hooded figures tend to cauldrons, the air putrid from boiling meat. Did I dream it? Or did I hear about it as a child in Sweden? Perhaps I read...
Philip Roth and #MeToo

Philip Roth and #MeToo

  In 2009, Marie Lundström arrives at Philip Roth’s isolated Connecticut country house to record an interview for Swedish Radio. “Are you alone?” he asks. She is. The taxi just left. Before they settle down in his studio, Roth telephones a neighbor who promises...