WERA VON ESSEN
WERA VON ESSEN was born 1986 and raised in one of Sweden's oldest cities, Uppsala. As a translator and writer she debuted with En debutants dagbok (A Debutant’s Diary) (2018), which was awarded the Borås Tidnings debutant prize in 2019, for its stylistic certainty around the exploration of creation and its conditions and boundaries. Wera also received the Swedish Academy’s scholarship for young and promising writers, the Gerard Bonnier Fund. In her second novel Våld och nära samtal (Violence and Intimate Conversations) (2020), nominated for the Vi Literature Prize, we enter a beautiful, lyrical and suggestive world in the struggle against living in total submission, until the encounter with the God of Catholicism.
Her work exists in a space between fact and fiction, dealing with spirituality and divine elements, eroticism and mysticism, with the parallelism between BDSM and religious submission. Her novel, Svar till D (Reply to D) (2021), explores the search for the self in the light of the Christian faith, depicting desire, love and despair. Wera was awarded the Bern Prize in 2022 for her vivid depiction of Stockholm's underbelly, creating a new field within contemporary Swedish fiction. Her new book En emigrants dagbok (An Emigrant’s Diary) was published in January 2024.
Photo: Saga Berlin
Agent: Moa Alfvén
WORKS
AN EMIGRANT’S DIARY
Published polaris, january 2024
Genre fiction
Pages 483
Wera von Essen has returned to the diary format. In this new book, it is an established author who has the floor, but with the same testing look, the same uncompromising willingness to go deep in terms of faith, writing, love. The author in this book lives her life between two continents, in Sweden and Brazil, and examines life in both countries with the eyes of an outsider.
REVIEWS
"It is this great, essential humanity, a life force made into sentences, as light as dark, that makes the book inalienable." Victor Malm, Expressen
"Her voice is dazzling and grand as it boldly seeks to make sense of the flux of a life in an era of chaotic misery." Carl-Michael Edenborg, Aftonbladet
"Wera von Essen writes prickly and beautifully like few" Jenny Aschenbrenner, SvD
"An emigrant's diary is at its deepest essence a reflection on the conditions and materiality of creation, and as such it is magnetic." Kristina Lindquist, Dagens Nyheter
"Here there are plenty of accurate observations and sharp analyzes of interpersonal relationships, and everything is rooted in a genuine interest and a strong desire to be part of the world. This makes the main character of the text, Wera von Essen, an unforgettable protagonist in something that is both a novel and an autobiography. But by all means ignore the genre designations, and content yourself with reading a veritable masterpiece." Björn Kohlström, Jönköpings-Posten
"Wera von Essen does it with gusto. An emigrant's diary absolutely floored me. It's sexy because it feels so incredibly real." UNT
REPLY TO D
PUBLISHED polaris, 2021
Genre fiction
Pages 96
Wera von Essen has carved out her own territory in younger Swedish fiction, a landscape characterized by religious devotion, existential concern, and longing for love, at once ancient and modern, with inspiration drawn as much from contemporary art and literature as from the 16th- century Spanish mystic John of the Cross. The new prose book Answer to D is a letter about a David with a Daniel in his memory, a letter to a You, perhaps a letter to all of them, which is at the same time one, written by an I who is frantically searching for a permanence in love, for trust and faith. I knew I was calling to you, the heart that cries out to the universe, why is it so wrong to want to be saved from yourself, to want someone to save you, there is a time for everything, I don't call anymore, not since that day, the heart can only break so many times.
A beautiful epistolary novel that depicts the grief and crisis that occurs after losing two lovers, David and Daniel. This is the letter to the two absent D's fused together, with themes of the desire for love and the pain of being left behind. In a fear of losing herself, she turns to the faith of Catholicism, in an attempt to save herself.
REVIEWS
“The biggest crime is lukewarmness. In Reply to D, Wera von Essen conjures up a high-density absence, a charged wait. She is not afraid of words like miracle. Perhaps she is on the trail of a love far beyond the web of consumerism. The spear in the heart as the ultimate consequence of surrendering” - Sveriges Radio
“Wera von Essen’s third and most stylized novel... Reply to D should be read after dusk in a single sitting. von Essen’s language is powerful, sometimes closed, and the narrator sees meaning in everything, including pain. Maybe it’s a kind of self-preservation, it doesn’t matter, because she captivates like a mystic.” - Dagens Nyheter
VIOLENCE AND INTIMATE CONVERSATIONS
published NATUR & KULTUR, 2020
Genre FICTION
Pages 129
“I thought, all these years, for as long as I can remember, the world has been the hardest thing, if I exist in the world, I don't exist anyway, which was confirmed once and for all in a closed ward, I sometimes compare it to a monastery, the other side from which the illusion becomes tangible and the knowledge that I was never there anyway, so it doesn't matter, so I might as well tell, so I can be a tool. In her grief over the lack of contact in the world, she takes the bus number 4 through the city. In it there are lovers, psychoanalysis, hotel jobs, church. There is a growing faith and a longing to give herself completely.”
Wera von Essen has written an evocative novel about pain and spiritual struggle, about the relationship between perversion and the sacred, and about relationships at a time when love seems to be absent.”
Autofictional Wera perceives Stockholm as empty and meaningless. In her sadness over her lack of contact with the world, she searches for a sense of belonging. She moves between different lovers and seeks comfort in sexualized violence, but also finds God through her artistic neighbor. She converts to Catholicism in the hope of finding her belongingness.
REVIEWS
“It is Wera von Essen's handling of style levels and the feverish presence that she pushes forward with her sentence structure that makes the whole book. A touch that sharpens the story, taking it through the slightly irritatingly self-absorbed and contemporary approach, a coquettish tone that is peeled off as the words are given the power to be honest." -Svenska Dagbladet
"In a breaking point between skinlessness and drastic arrogance, Wera von Essen has created her own little literary world - headstrong, elegant and engaging." - Svenska Dagbladet
"von Essen very nicely captures the pleasures of submission, without ever romanticizing them, making them porous or aesthetic in the wrong way." - Göteborgs-Posten
"There is a restrained power in the suggestive and rhythmically syncopated language ... a rarely interesting author in the making." - Aftonbladet
A DEBUTANT’S DIARY
