Norway House’s Bokklubb is proud to welcome Minnesota-based Swedish translator Rachel Willson Broyles to our next meet-up. If you haven’t come to our new book club yet, this is a great time to hop on board! We're reading Willson-Broyles’ translation of Stolen by Ann-Helén Laestadius. The novel is a #1 international bestseller and is being adapted for Netflix. Books are available for sale at ALSO Ingebretsen’s Gavebutikk at Norway House. There is no fee to attend.
If you have questions, contact Rebecca Sundquist at rsundquist@norwayhouse.org
About Stolen
A spellbinding Swedish novel that follows a young indigenous woman as she struggles to defend her family's reindeer herd and culture amidst xenophobia, climate change, and a devious hunter whose targeted kills are considered mere theft in the eyes of the law.
On a winter day north of the Arctic Circle, nine-year-old Elsa--daughter of Sámi reindeer herders--sees a man brutally kill her beloved reindeer calf and threaten her into silence. When her father takes her to report the crime, local police tell them that there is nothing they can do about these "stolen" animals. Killings like these are classified as theft in the reports that continue to pile up, uninvestigated. But reindeer are not just the Sámi's livelihood, they also hold spiritual significance; attacking a reindeer is an attack on the culture itself.
Ten years later, hatred and threats against the Sámi keep escalating, and more reindeer are tortured and killed in Elsa's community. Finally, she's had enough and decides to push back on the apathetic police force. The hunter comes after her this time, leading to a catastrophic final confrontation.
Based on real events, Ann-Helén Laestadius's award-winning novel Stolen is part coming-of-age story, part love song to a disappearing natural world, and part electrifying countdown to a dramatic resolution--a searing depiction of a forgotten part of Sweden.
Ann-Helén Laestadius is an author and journalist from Kiruna, Sweden. She is Sámi and of Tornedalian descent, two of Sweden's national minorities. In 2016, Laestadius was awarded the prestigious August Prize for Best Young Adult and Children's Novel for Ten Past One, for which she was also awarded Norrland's Literature Prize. Stolen is her first adult novel and was named Sweden's Book of the Year.
from bookshop.orgAbout William Kent Krueger
Rachel Willson-Broyles became interested in Sweden and the Swedish language at an early age. Rachel grew up in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, where she spent summers checking out very tall stacks of books from the library. She became interested in Sweden and the Swedish language early on and majored in Scandinavian Studies as an undergraduate at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, MN. She spent a college semester abroad in Göteborg, Sweden. After a few years off, she returned to school at the University of Wisconsin-Madison to get her MA and PhD, also in Scandinavian Studies.
She began her career in translation while at UW-Madison, thanks to meeting Swedish author Jonas Hassen Khemiri when he visited campus. Rachel's debut translation was Khemiri's novel Montecore, and she has since translated several of Khemiri's short stories and plays as well as crime novels by Åke Edwardson, Jan Wallentin, and Arne Dahl. Rachel lives in Saint Paul, Minnesota.
from Goodreads