Capital by Therese Bohman is out today in Sweden, published by Norstedts.
A sharp contemporary psychological novel about desire, class and parasocial relationships, Capital follows Emma, who works at a popular preschool in Stockholm’s Södermalm district. When influencer Alice’s daughter Stella joins the preschool, Emma is gradually drawn into the family’s seemingly perfect world. Soon, she has not only their trust and the key to their home, but also unprecedented access to the life she has long followed from a distance on social media. As Emma and Alice grow closer, their relationship begins to shift between admiration and contempt, intimacy and obsession.
In an interview, Therese Bohman describes how the world of influencers and the desires it creates became an important starting point for the novel:
“It is fascinating how desire is created in that world, how as a follower you begin to desire things you didn’t even know existed and didn’t know you could feel a need for.”
Ahead of publication, Capital was selected by Dagens Nyheter as one of ten works of fiction to look forward to this autumn, describing it as a contemporary take on The Hand That Rocks The Cradle. Femina has likewise included the novel among its most anticipated books of the autumn.
