JONAS RYDIN
JONAS RYDIN was born in 1969 in Stockholm, studied political science and languages first in his native Sweden, and then later in Paris. In 1998, he settled in Vietnam where he has lived ever since and pursued a career in business. His debut novel, Världens åttonde underverk / The Eighth Wonder of the World (2021),
is a darkly evocative account of people connected to a clothing manufacturer outside Saigon. The author Carl-Henning Wijkmark has described the book as the first significant novel on the Eastern-Western theme in the Swedish language – in the same spirit as Graham Greene, Joseph Conrad and E.M Forster. "A masterpiece" wrote Stig Larsson in the Swedish newspaper Expressen.
Rydin's second novel, Dö som en konstnär /Die as an artist (2022), is a mournful and dreamy play about a man haunted by his past in a theater. The audiobook is narrated by Swedish actor Ola Rapace.
Agents Erik Larsson & Maja Hjelm
WORKS
DIE AS AN ARTIST
Published 2022
Genre LITERARY FICTION
Pages 206
Imagine that your name is Erik Hagelin and you have just returned to Sweden, after more than twenty years in Ukraine. You are a successful businessman and have recently published a book that has garnered some attention. Imagine trying to reconnect with your grown son even though you barely know how to recycle your garbage. Now you witness the advancement of the nationalists in your home country and feel an inexplicable discomfort in the entrance hall of your own apartment.
You are a person with big dreams and a lot of unprocessed history. One day you get an invitation to the 100th anniversary celebration of the theater where you worked as an usher as a young man and fell in love for the first time. Imagine that all of these things are pieces of the same puzzle.
Die as An artist is a game of self-deception and disguise; absurdities and improvisations. Everything can happen, everything is possible, and everything is probable.
REVIEWS
”Rydin is driven by a mild rage, and it's a fruitful method. It's entertaining most of the time [...] With Johan Heltne's book Sympathy for the Devil and to some extent Andrés Stoopendaal's The Dunning-Kruger Effect fresh in mind, one can read Rydin's book as yet another entry dealing with a crisis of masculinity in intellectual environments, among artists and cultural individuals. It is a world where the beautiful is taken over by the ugly.”
- Björn Kohlström, bernur
"Die as an Artist is different and unpredictable, the main character Erik is divisive and vaguely superstitious in an annoying way. He shifts from shy to mean, to rational to cocky. He has dreams of being an author, but is troubled with jealousy, love, self-doubt and family problems. We have a politically correct son with an unreasonable hatred for his aging father and surprising cultural figures – all wrapped up in a humourous story. Birger Sjöberg is cited: "The expensive drops of self-belief must be bought in the silent shed of one's own being." Or one’s own blood. An artistically exciting book.”
- Nina Lekander, author, journalist and translator
THE EIGHTH WONDER OF THE WORLD