Journal

Journal by Birgitta Hjalmarson 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...

Journal by Birgitta Hjalmarson 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...

Journal by Birgitta Hjalmarson 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...

Journal by Birgitta Hjalmarson 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...

Journal by Birgitta Hjalmarson 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?...

  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...

Journal by Birgitta Hjalmarson Sam Law, of It's Good to Read, published this interview in November, 2018. Please, give us a little more about the person behind the book:Born in Sweden, I’ve spent the better part of my life in the US. I came to...

Journal by Birgitta Hjalmarson Fylgia WRITTEN BY BIRGITTA HJALMARSON REVIEW BY VIVIANE CRYSTAL Anna is a proud, intelligent older woman recounting her life in the dark, serious atmosphere of Sweden. Her story begins in the time just preceding...

Rainer Maria Rilke was in his late twenties when he wrote Ellen Key from Rome, complaining about the “galloping spring.” Two years earlier, in 1901, he had married Clara Westhoff, a sculptress, with whom he now had a daughter. He longed for the north, for distances...

Journal by Birgitta Hjalmarson SUSAN MARY MALONE / JUNE 26, 2018 Creating a Great Novel out of Historical Events This week we have an interview with Birgitta Hjalmarson, whose beautiful novel, Fylgia,was published this month by...

Journal by Birgitta Hjalmarson They say when God created Sweden, he began with the south, and so it became fertile and good in every way. The Devil, meanwhile, ran farther north, where he created the district of Mark.  On the surface it was...