KAMMAKARGATAN – MY STREET
By Therese Bohman
“Have you ever walked up my street, Kammakar street, from Tors street, climbed the slope and continued down toward Drottning street?
Have you ever walked it on a Saturday in early November, when just a stone’s throw away the streets are swarming with people , out shopping and socializing, slipping into cafés for a coffee or a city-center lunch, perhaps searching for a Father’s Day gift?
Have you noticed how strange it is, the difference between my street and Drottning street, though they lie so close to each other, even crossing at a single point?
My street remains still and hushed, almost deserted, even during the very hours when the city is at its most crowded. Everyone is on Drottning street, weaving their way among its many shops, cafés, and restaurants. My street has almost nothing. One only goes there with a purpose. For a few months in the autumn of 1997, I had one.”
SHE HAS JUST left the safety of her childhood home to begin a new life at Stockholm University. Her days are filled with nervousness, expectation, and loneliness. She rents a small room in the outskirts of Stockholm city, tries to carve out a place for herself in the vastness of the city, and feels invisible in the lecture halls.
EVERYTHING CHANGES WHEN she meets Andreas. He dresses in black and carries himself with a blasé confidence. He also opens the door to another Stockholm — a world of literary fanzines, smoke-filled cafés, and late nights in an apartment on Kammakar street. In the quiet, understated mystery between the city’s crowded streets and Kammakar street’s desolation, a friendship begins to take shape, one that will come to define her life in many ways.
ABOUT THE BOOK
First published by Norstedts, Sweden 2025
RIGHTS SOLD TO
Swedish, Norstedts
REVIEWS
At last, Stockholm has its own Patrick Modiano.
– Svenska Dagbladet
Bohman has always had a romantic streak in her novels, but rarely has she embraced the feeling of enchantment as she does here, when she describes the feeling of growing up.
– Göteborgs-Posten
My Street is Bohman in concentrated form. […] [Here] loyal Bohman readers can enjoy the undiluted version of the world and moods that characterise her novels.
– Falu-Kuriren
My Street by Therese Bohman is a gem! It ended too quickly! The compact format is certainly perfect for the story, but still – I could have stayed on Kammakar street for a few hundred more pages.
@litterasur
Therese Bohman uses the energy of mystery to charge 1990s Stockholm with attraction and beauty, but the mystery itself remains beautifully on the periphery of the story.
– Svenska Dagbladet
The narrator sifts the sand at the bottom of the hourglass after this fleeting state, which unfolded as if in parentheses; but was perhaps the most important thing of all. The friendship with Andreas and Roman and the whole existence on Kammakar street appears without warning, interspersed with quiet tremors from deeper emotional layers, and then slips away again, as quietly and imperceptibly as it appeared.
– Dagens Nyheter
Therese Bohman achieves a level of intensity in her storytelling that surpasses most of her other work.
– Expressen
This book was so enjoyable! I like the feeling of studying in a big city and being cultured. I like their friendship and all the time they spend together in both everyday life and in deep discussions. I like that there is a real sparkle to the story, that the months and especially Christmas become magical, and that the Christmas atmosphere is so atmospheric and beautifully portrayed.
@bokreflektioner
With her sixth novel, Therese Bohman has created a narrative that is stylistically more assured than most. Kristoffer Leandoer reads My Street and concludes that a first-rate chronicler of Stockholm has now emerged.
– Svenska Dagbladet
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