Seven books by writers from Sweden, set there, that give a real sense of the place, starting with The Emigrants and The Long Ships.
Sweden's Selma Lagerlöf, author of The Wonderful Adventures of Nils, became in 1909 the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. Her book sends a boy across the country's provinces on a goose, taking in landscapes and folklore. Eyvind Johnson and Harry Martinson shared the prize in 1974, and the poet Tomas Tranströmer, the most recent Swedish laureate, won it in 2011. August Strindberg, better known abroad as a dramatist, published the satirical novel The Red Room in 1879, aimed at the hypocrisies of Stockholm's bureaucrats and artists.
Vilhelm Moberg's The Emigrants follows Småland peasants in the 1840s who leave poverty and religious constraint behind for America. Crime fiction has also examined modern Sweden: in Henning Mankell's Faceless Killers, Wallander investigates a murder in rural Skåne amid 1990s xenophobia.
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Småland peasants in the 1840s endure poverty and religious constraint before leaving for America, showing rural Swedish life and the causes of mass emigration.
A Viking-age adventure saga, steeped in the Norse world, written in 1940s Sweden and set partly in Scandinavia, though it travels widely.
Crime novel exposing Swedish corporate corruption, family secrets and the country's violent misogyny, from Stockholm to a remote northern island.
Wallander investigates a murder in rural Skåne, with immigration and xenophobia in 1990s Sweden at the centre of the story.
Satirical 1879 novel of Stockholm's bureaucrats, artists and reformers, capturing the city's social hypocrisies in the late nineteenth century.
A boy rides on a goose across Sweden's provinces, offering a tour of the country's landscapes, folklore and regional character.
An elderly man in rural Västerbotten in northern Sweden faces aging, isolation and the loss of independence, alongside his bond with his hunting dog.
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