I was very late reading this, it's quite possibly the most talked about novel in Sweden this year, but it took me until one of the very last days of it to pick it up. Fittingly right after having a flu, since the narrator tells the story while battling a fever. It's written by Ia Genberg and it's called "The details", it's coming out in English next year. It's just 152 pages but I genuinely think it's one of the very finest examples I can think of for anyone who wants to get to know contemporary Swedish literature. It's not a grand, loud, epic story, not at all. It's just four short portraits of people passing in and out of the narrator's life from youth to adulthood. It's about relationships, about love, about parents and children, about...all of it. It's about all of the books the narrator remember from specific times in her life, the poetry, the shapes of her language. It's such humble writing, almost shy storytelling, sometimes you find yourself leaning close to the book so as not to miss something. The little observations about being young, and about growing up, and about getting lost by accident, and getting lost on purpose, searching for yourself in everyone else...damn it, I've underlined half the book. I wish I could write like this. I really, really hope this book travels far and wide internationally. I know some of you following me own book stores and host book clubs, so...this is what I'll shout about going into the new year. This is the Swede you should get.