Read and discuss Scandinavian literature in translation as part of our Nordic Book Club, now online! Each month we select a novel from some of the best Nordic literary voices. Discussions have typically taken place the last Tuesday of the month at Scandinavia House but will now be taking place bi-weekly as an online meeting. Register here to sign up for the meeting; registrants will receive a web link to where the meeting will take place.
Book club participants will all appear online at the start of the meeting when they log in so that they are able to take part in the conversation. For participants who would prefer not to be visible onscreen, see an easy tutorial online here on how to set a profile image that will appear onscreen instead.
On June 30, we’ll be discussing The Colonel’s Wife by Rosa Liksom. In the final twilit moments of her life, an elderly woman looks back on her childhood as the daughter of a member of the right-wing Finnish Whites before World War II, and her relationship with the much older and domineering Colonel, over wartime years in which they fraternized with the Nazi elite.
As both the marriage and the war become increasingly dark and destructive, the narrator’s authoritarian tendencies and engagement with the natural world reveal a complex individual psychology and a warning about the perils of nationalism.