Why am I passionate about this?

My Hungarian father was 7 years old when he almost got deported to Polen by the Nazis, but was miraculously saved by his mother. He came to Sweden, where I´m born, and never looked back, completely focused on the future. So I, his only child, focus on memory and oblivion. It´s like we stand back to back—or like I´m a seamstress, trying to stitch the past with the present. In my British mother´s family history is Salonica, the magical Jewish city in the Ottoman Empire. My Spanish-Jewish grandfather spoke the same Castillian dialect that Cervantes used to write Don Quijote. And I´m born in Sweden. These are my universes and where my writing is born.  


I wrote

Book cover of 1947: Where Now Begins

What is my book about?

1947: Where Now Begins is not only a gripping family history. The careful juxtaposition of disparate events highlights an underlying…

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The books I picked & why

Book cover of Ordinary Men

Elisabeth Åsbrink Why did I love this book?

As a child of a holocaust survivor, I keep coming back to this book. Here Christopher Browning investigates the historic circumstances and the personal stories behind one police battalion of cheerful, friendly, ordinary men, who ended up being responsible for over tens of thousands of Jews during WW2. A great historian at work, helping us to comprehend the incomprehensible.

By Christopher R. Browning,

Why should I read it?

5 authors picked Ordinary Men as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The shocking account of how a unit of average middle-aged Germans became the cold-blooded murderers of tens of thousands of Jews.


Book cover of The Notebook, the Proof, the Third Lie: Three Novels

Elisabeth Åsbrink Why did I love this book?

Agota Kristof is the same age as my father and experienced the same country, Hungary, move from its pre-war existence to dictatorship and deportations during the war and then, after the war, turning into a communist state. Her absolutely brilliant storytelling is mystifying, present, and distant at the same time, maybe an allegory over the state of her homeland, maybe over being human. The Notebook is mindblowing.

Book cover of If This Is a Man and The Truce

Elisabeth Åsbrink Why did I love this book?

Another book I keep returning to is If This Is a Man. Primo Levi, the Italian chemist, has written a matter-of-fact masterpiece, poetic yet never sentimental, about his year as a slave in the Monowitz/Auschwitz concentration camp in 1944. It´s a low-key book but vibrant book about being a human surrounded by inhumanity.   

By Primo Levi, Stuart Woolf (translator),

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked If This Is a Man and The Truce as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

With the moral stamina and intellectual pose of a twentieth-century Titan, this slightly built, duitful, unassuming chemist set out systematically to remember the German hell on earth, steadfastly to think it through, and then to render it comprehensible in lucid, unpretentious prose. He was profoundly in touch with the minutest workings of the most endearing human events and with the most contempible. What has survived in Levi's writing isn't just his memory of the unbearable, but also, in THE PERIODIC TABLE and THE WRENCH, his delight in what made the world exquisite to him. He was himself a "magically endearing…


Book cover of Go Tell It on the Mountain

Elisabeth Åsbrink Why did I love this book?

I only recently started to read James Baldwin and am blown away by his intensity and poetic language. In this first novel he describes the world of his childhood in Harlem, NY. It is American identity, history, and passion, it´s a portrait of a young man as well of the wounds of slavery hurting in every individual born into the American system. And it’s a beautiful story.

By James Baldwin,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Go Tell It on the Mountain as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

'Go back to where you started, or as far back as you can, examine all of it, travel your road again and tell the truth about it. Sing or shout or testify or keep it to yourself: but know whence you came.'

Originally published in 1953, Go Tell it on the Mountain was James Baldwin's first major work, based in part on his own childhood in Harlem. With lyrical precision, psychological directness, resonating symbolic power and a rage that is at once unrelenting and compassionate, Baldwin chronicles a fourteen-year-old boy's discovery of the terms of his identity as the stepson…


Book cover of Circe

Elisabeth Åsbrink Why did I love this book?

An exiled witch takes centre stage in this powerful retelling of Homer’s The Odyssey. This book may be damaged by its own hype, but I read it when it was quite newly released and loved every sentence of this love story, where anger, cruelty, and mythical betrayal are ingredients. A great way of getting in touch with the archaic works of Homer. 

By Madeline Miller,

Why should I read it?

43 authors picked Circe as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The international Number One bestseller from the author of The Song of Achilles, shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction

Woman. Witch. Myth. Mortal. Outcast. Lover. Destroyer. Survivor. CIRCE.

In the house of Helios, god of the sun and mightiest of the Titans, a daughter is born. Circe is a strange child - not powerful and terrible, like her father, nor gorgeous and mercenary like her mother. Scorned and rejected, Circe grows up in the shadows, at home in neither the world of gods or mortals. But Circe has a dark power of her own: witchcraft. When her gift threatens…


Explore my book 😀

Book cover of 1947: Where Now Begins

What is my book about?

1947: Where Now Begins is not only a gripping family history. The careful juxtaposition of disparate events highlights an underlying interconnectedness and suggests a new way of thinking about the postwar era. The book deals with a decisive year, follows Simone de Beauvoir, Raphael Lemkin, George Orwell among others, and traces the key person, Per Engdahl, who revives the fascist and Nazi movements after WW2. A single, momentous year that is resonating very, very clearly today.

Book cover of Ordinary Men
Book cover of The Notebook, the Proof, the Third Lie: Three Novels
Book cover of If This Is a Man and The Truce

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Book cover of To be a Fae Queen

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Tricia Copeland Author Of To be a Fae Queen

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Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve been obsessed with fantasy since my grandmother bought me the entire Dorothy and the Land of Oz series as a kid. I love discovering new types of fantasy characters, spins on characters, new lore in genres, and mythology woven in creative ways. For my fantasy group, I’ve researched many interpretations of fae, witches, elves, vampires, and shapeshifters. I’m always looking to add to my list, and I love finding Indie authors new to their niche. I feel so privileged to interview many authors like these and Jennifer L. Armentrout (squeal) for my podcast, The Finding the Magic Book Podcast. I hope you love these books as much as I did.

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What is my book about?

After losing her brothers, Titania studied and trained to rule Aubren. But she hadn’t planned on becoming Queen at fifteen. Now with her reign challenged from within the castle walls, she must decide what is best for her kingdom. Should another rule in her stead? Or has fate led her to this moment?

Only she can decide a path that becomes littered with choices. Will a marriage shore up her reign? Could naming a successor be enough? And what of the creatures of the deep and a tale of one who can end all evil? Faced with a choice to…

To be a Fae Queen

By Tricia Copeland, Jo Michaels (editor), Jennifer Oberth (editor)

What is this book about?

With an endearing yet fierce female protagonist, fans of Sarah J. Maas and Jenna Wolfhart will love this epic Fae fantasy.

The last of her line, a faerie princess prepares to take the throne. But multiple forces plot against her, some trusted friends…

After losing her brothers Titania trained and studied to rule Aubren. But she hadn’t planned on becoming Queen at fifteen. Now with her reign challenged from within the castle walls she must decide what is best for her country. Should another rule in her stead? Or has fate led her to this moment?

Only she can decide…


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