Johanne Lykke Holm’s Strega shortlisted for the Nordic Council Literature Prize

Sweden’s new literary star has arrived: Johanne Lykke Holm has been shortlisted for the Nordic Council Literary Prize 2021 for her novel Strega. The prize is awarded to a work of a ”high literary and artistic quality”, written in one of the Nordic languages. Each year, collectively fourteen books from Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Faroe Islands, Greenland, Iceland, Norway, Åland and the Sami language area are nominated, and STREGA is one of two from Sweden. 
Says the jury:The author contends with motifs such as these out of boldness, not a lack of originality. And what breathes new life into them is Lykke Holm’s sober hallucinatory prose, which constantly surprises the reader with unexpected word choices and statements. The supernatural permeates the everyday through the stimulating and uninhibited imagery: “A curtain spilled out of an open window like ectoplasm.” In this unusually beautiful novel, Lykke Holm not only conjures up a girls’ world full of holiness and secrecy, but points to the possibility of another, less romantic romance – still enchanted, but stripped of illusion.
Read more here:https://www.norden.org/en/nominee/johanne-lykke-holm

Photographer: Khashayar Naderehvandi