PUBLISHED NORSTEDTS 2024
GENRE NOVEL
PAGES 354

ALL RIGHTS AVAILABLE

When Ingrid meets her younger teaching colleague Torkel, she falls head over heels in love with him. He is different from all the men she has met before, open, seductive, caring and full of the new ideas of the 70s about how to be and live. And Ingrid lets him into the well-organised, independent life she has built up over many years since her divorce from Georg. The two children look at Torkel with great suspicion. Who is this man who has stormed into their mother's life and made her so alienated and changed? Tom has already moved out, but Johanna, who has just graduated and is eager to take her first steps into adulthood, is visibly disturbed by Torkel's insistent presence. Ingrid doesn't understand why Johanna is suddenly so stiff and withdrawn.

Torkel drills his way into their lives and seems to believe that he is the one who has the mission to free them all. And his demand for openness is both enticing and threatening.

Ingrid knows this is a relationship that won't last, but she intends to enjoy it while it lasts. Why can't the children be happy for her?

This is a revolutionary story of a condition that manages to shake the whole family to the core in the summer of 1979.

PUBLISHED NORSTEDTS, 2022
GENRE NOVEL
PAGES 380

ALL RIGHTS AVAILABLE

Stockholm in the late 1950s. Ingrid lives with her son Tom in a small flat. She is a teacher at a girls' school and enjoys being in charge of her own life. She is a welcome guest of her friend Britt and her husband Ingvar, a well-known film producer, who hosts fancy parties with exciting guests.

Then she meets Georg, a young ambitious journalist, who has just moved to the city and has big dreams of modernity and a society that promises a better future for everyone.

Neither of them is in a hurry to commit, but when Ingrid becomes pregnant, they do what is expected of them, taking responsibility and planning for a family together. They share hopes for companionship and love, but also both have a strong desire for a freer way of life. But how do they balance their expectations when they still live in an age of convention and tradition? And can they be sensitive to their own and each other's perceptions?

Helena von Zweigbergk's novel brings to life a time, a city, and a couple. A woman and a man from very different backgrounds, trying to share their dreams of a brighter future and a more modern way of living and loving.