Ten Past One

ORIGINAL TITLE: Tio över ett

AUTHOR: Privat: Ann-Helén Laestadius

ORIGINAL PUBLISHER: Rabén & Sjögren

GENRE: Children

Maja can’t sleep. She wants to, but she can’t. Every night she sets her alarm for ten minutes past one. Who else is going to wake up her mom, dad and little sister when their house collapses into the mining pit? She keeps a duffle bag with a change of clothes, a flashlight and other important things underneath her bed. In case they have to escape head over heels.

Because of the mining company’s subterranean detonations, the entire town of Kiruna – people as well as buildings – must be relocated. Maja’s family will be provided with a nice, new apartment, but all she wants is to stay in their old house. She doesn’t trust the politicians and corporate executives who claim the town cannot collapse. She can hear the rumbling of the nocturnal detonations; she can feel the ground shaking!

Maja worries that her best friend Julia will have to move all the way to Luleå, and that Albin in the other class will fall in love with one of the pretty handball players. But nothing frightens her more than the iron ore mine.


Reviews

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“Very well-written”

Piteå Tidningen

“Goes straight to your heart”

Nerikes Allehanda

Endorsements

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“In Kiruna, Maja sets her alarm for ten past one every night, in time for the nocturnal detonations in the mine. She has to be ready to save her family in the worst case scenario that it all collapses. Ann-Helén Laestadius’s YA novel is a story about living with a constant fear that everything will fall apart. It is about the collective grief of a changing community, about civil society and local politics, and about love and friendship. In energetic prose, Laestadius intertwines place, politics and psychology.”

The August Prize Jury

Rights sold

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Albanian rights sold to Ombra GvG

Dramatical rights sold to Norrbottensteatern

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