The Christmas Oratorio begins in the 1930s, when Solveig Nordensson (wife of Aron and mother of Sidner) is accidentally killed. The grieving family abandons its home and moves to another town, hoping to start afresh, but finds that its emotional burdens have emigrated with it. Aron, bereft by the loss of his wife, starts "seeing" her in capricious hallucinations, and tragically seeks her reincarnation in a love-starved woman half a world away. The introverted Sidner begins a quest for emotional maturity that leads him into odd friendships with a remarkably self-reliant street boy and a free-spirited older woman. And grandson Victor, heir to the tortured legacy left by Solveig's death, finds redemption for himself in a staging of Bach's Christmas Oratorio - a performance begun by Solveig half a century earlier and interrupted by her tragic death.

Brilliant. The work of Scobbie and company deserves wide distribution-World Literature Today. This is the best single volume history of modern Swedish literature available and this new edition makes it even better. With over one hundred pages of ne

Essays on Swedish authors of the twentieth-century include prominent Swedish writers from different decades, movements, genres and gender, with preference given to authors published in English translation. Fenno-Swedish writers have also been included since they write in Swedish and are part of the Swedish cultural history. Discusses the establishment of the Nobel Prizes, as well as poets of lyrical modernism, proletarian realists, autodidacts, and contemporary poetry.

Completely revised and updated to include the most up-to-date selections, this is a bold and bright reference book to the novels and the writers that have excited the world's imagination. This authoritative selection of novels, reviewed by an international team of writers, critics, academics, and journalists, provides a new take on world classics and a reliable guide to what's hot in contemporary fiction. Featuring more than 700 illustrations and photographs, presenting quotes from individual novels and authors, and completely revised for 2012, this is the ideal book for everybody who loves reading.

The Encyclopedia of the Novel is the first reference book that focuses on the development of the novel throughout the world. Entries on individual writers assess the place of that writer within the development of the novel form, explaining why and in exactly what ways that writer is importnant. Similarly, an entry on an individual novel discusses the importance of that novel not only form, analyzing the particular innovations that novel has introduced and the ways in which it has influenced the subsequent course of the genre. A wide range of topic entries explore the history, criticism, theory, production, dissemination and reception of the novel. A very important component of the Encyclopedia of the Novel is its long surveys of development of the novel in various regions of the world.