The most recommended books about Sweden

I can still recall snuggling up to my mom as she read me this for the first time, and now it’s a joy I’ve gotten to relive with my daughter! This one—another Swedish translation—is a tale of three little hippos who have a passion for diving! That’s right, off a diving board! Their naughty adventures as they seek out Tall Cliff, the dangers they face, and Mrs. Hippopotamus’ carpentry, will grab children’s attention. The storytelling and humor are spot-on, and the illustrations couple with it beautifully. A very entertaining read. 

An emotional story that talks about bravery, hope, and loyalty. During an adventure race through the jungle of Ecuador in South America, a Swedish race team lead by Mikael Lindnord befriends a mangy, but determined dog. The dog (Arthur) joins the team and their adventure begins. In the end, the team saves the dog. But, as is so often the case in these animal/people encounters, it is the dog who becomes the quiet hero and ultimately saves the human.

Block 46 features themes that are close to my heart, along with two strong, determined female leads and a thought-provoking plot.

A true-crime writer and criminal profiler join forces to investigate two murders that may be linked to Buchenwald concentration camp – an example of journalists not always investigating on their own.

I don’t usually read Holocaust fiction (only the true survivor stories), but Johana Gustawson has taken one of the darkest times in human history and woven it seamlessly and sensitively into a contemporary serial-killer crime novel.

Block 46 is well-researched, very dark, and very twisty, featuring a strong mix of past and present, and the descriptions of the concentration camp are harrowing and realistically portrayed.

At a home for troubled girls, a young girl has been brutally murdered. One of the other girls has gone missing and the murder weapon is discovered in her bed. But is it really that easy? Detective Inspector Joona Linna pieces the evidence together.

Lars Kepler is the pseudonym of husband and wife team Alexandra Coelho Ahndoril and Alexander Ahndoril. The Joona Linna series follows Linna, Detective Superintendent at the police's National Operations Department, and Saga Bauer, an Operational Superintendent at the Swedish Security Service. The diverse viewpoints and short chapters give an exciting and varied read.

The first of Moberg’s 4-volume saga of Swedish immigrants, this book is so thoroughly researched that he invented a term, calling them “documentary novels.” The family in the story are farmers from a poor, remote parish in Sweden whose lives are constricted by both the church and the state. This reflects the painful realities of Europe in 1850, where almost everyone was poor, rural, oppressed, and completely unprepared for the journey ahead of them. Whether you read Moberg’s Emigrant Novels for the intense personal drama or for more understanding of why people leave their homelands, you will find these stories deeply emotional and insightful.

The former movie star “was now in a country where no one even knew his name.” The cry of every refugee, the eerie sense of being transparent, dispensable, irrelevant emerges powerfully from Alyson Richman’s intricately plotted and touching narrative: a fictional tale of World War Two refugees from Finland and France and asylum-seekers from Pinochet’s Chile whose new lives cross in Sweden.

The heroine of the engrossing series, Lisbeth Salander, is a very fine computer hacker but has difficulty relating to others. Together with the journalist Mikael Blomkvist, she investigates crimes and corruption in the government.

I like the fast pace and interesting themes of these books. Lisbeth, who seeks justice for herself and others, is a very original and psychologically flawed heroine. What I don’t like is that in this series a major villain is the very bad child psychiatrist whose ‘treatment’ of Lisbeth was not to talk with her but simply put her in isolation and restraints.

In contrast, in my own novel I tried to demystify the work of psychiatrists by showing, in a realistic way, the process of making a diagnosis and a treatment plan that has the best interests of the patient in mind.

Now here’s a fun flip on so-called “cosy” crime. Remember the twist of Columbo, the way the show started with us viewers seeing the murderer commit the crime and then allowing us to watch Columbo slowly assembled his case against them? This book by Helene Tursten and translated to English by Marlaine Delargy offers a similar vibe. Our protagonist Maud has more than one notch on her proverbial belt, and we get to hear about each killing, along with the justification for them all. All the grit you’d expect from Scandinavian crime, but with the delightful slant of this outwardly fragile old lady being the center of it all. From Sweden to South Africa, Maud makes her mark! Plus there are cookie recipes, with a distinctly Scandi-noir flavor.

Christina of Sweden, known today primarily through Greta Garbo’s portrayal of her in the 1933 film, became queen at age six when her father was killed in battle; she received the education of a prince, including the study of statecraft, for which she read the Latin biography of Elizabeth I. Initially deemed a boy at birth, Christina’s habit of crossdressing, her refusal to marry, and her romantic attachments to both women and men bespeak her ambiguous sexuality. Veronica Buckley’s biography does justice to this idiosyncratic and controversial figure who abdicated her throne, converted to Catholicism, and moved to Rome. Although she took Alexander the Great as her model and sought to rule Naples and Poland-Lithuania after her abdication, she revealingly recorded in her memoirs her thoughts concerning the predicament she faced as a female sovereign: “Women should never be rulers... Women who rule make themselves ridiculous one way or the… show more.

This book moved me to tears after just reading a couple of pages. The authors describe lots of cases where dogs (and their handlers) have helped people in their lives – calming students, giving elderly people hope, and making them want to do things again. If you want to work together with your dog and help other people in f ex schools, old age care centers, etc. this is a great book. It takes you through the basics of what the dog needs to know, how to teach it, and lots of things to think about when you choose a dog trainer to help you educate your dog.