HÄRIFRÅN TILL ALLMÄNNINGEN – FROM HERE TO THE GREAT COMMONS

By Steve Sem-Sandberg

THE YEAR IS 1969. A bitter war still rages in Vietnam. In space, astronauts with shiny helmets hold a whole world spellbound as they prepare to take the first steps on the Moon. These amazing world events also reach all the way to Venby, a small suburb of Stockholm, where a murderer is stalking the streets, where adults commit adulteries and where kids fight for territorial gains in a war that darkly mirrors the one fought on the television screens. In a mix of childhood reminiscences and magical realism both hilarious and intense, Steve Sem-Sandberg tells the story of a Swedish middle-class on the rise through the destinies of some of the suburban families. In the centre of this moving story stands 9-year-old Leonard, an autistic boy who witnesses and understands all the tragic events unfolding around him, but is unable to speak.

FROM HERE TO THE GREAT COMMONS is the first book in a series of novels on every day life in Swedish suburbs from the late sixties to the early nineties.