Read a book from each country discussion

Partly in honor of PBS beginning a new dramatization of the Kurt Wallander series, here are my initial recommendations:

1) All the Kurt Wallander books by Henning Mankell, including but not limited to:

* The Faceless Killers
* The Dogs of Riga
* The White Lioness
* The Man Who Smiled
* Sidetracked
* The Fifth Woman
* One Step Behind

(Wallander is morose, dysfunctional, dyspepetic, and a wonderfully tenacious and humble investigator)

2) The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, Stieg Larsson
(Another great mystery built partly around financial misdeeds)

3) Hanna's Daughters, Marianne Fredricksson
(Multigenerational, tension filled family saga)

4) The Emigrant novels, Vilhelm Moberg
(A great, great coming to America saga)

Another one: Bathsheba, by Torgny Lindgren -- a really unusual, vivid, poetic retelling of the David story

I am reading The Royal Physician's Visit. The writing is fabulous. Great historical fiction. Per Olov Enquist, the author, is Swedish but the book is about the Danish king Christian VII. I must also get my hands on The Book about Blanche and Marie, about the Curie couple. Excellent writing style.

Need a title from Sweden? Giving away Swedish translation by Anne Sward, Breathless at link below. BTW, I have The Royal Physician's Visit but not started it yet...Now I want to!

http://www.theblacksheepdances.com/20...

Amy, when I saw this message I remembered that I still want to read "The Book about Blanch and Marie", it seems that I can finally get a copy. It is back in print.

A very good one I'm currently reading. Different, bizarre and darkly funny: The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared

I recently finished Selma Lagerlof's The Girl from the Marsh Croft. It's a collection of short stories from the late 19th/early 20th century.

Sandy , if you enjoyed Lagerlof's short stories, then I highly recommend The Wonderful Adventures of Nils. All Swedes read this in school because it teaches Swedish geography.

There lots of great children's books from sweden. All works by Astrid Lindgren for example. Also really are the works by Hâkan Nesser, especially "Kim Novak badade aldrig i Genesarets sjö" which every teenager has to read in school in Sweden. It's a really good crime story, that was also made as a movie.

Chrissie wrote: "Sandy , if you enjoyed Lagerlof's short stories, then I highly recommend The Wonderful Adventures of Nils. All Swedes read this in school because it teaches Swedish geography."

Thanks. I'll add this to my list.

Stolen by Ann-Helén Laestadius* (Sweden) 26 Oct 2025 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ my review