Editor:
Deborah Bragan-Turner
E-mail: 
2012:2 Issue
Editorial
The short pier running out into the Thames from the north Kent town of Gravesend was for many years home to a plaque marking one of the very few places in Britain ever visited by world-famous Swedish playwright August Strindberg. The plaque, removed during renovations, now languishes at the back of a crowded storeroom, but the man continues to fascinate and provoke us in equal measure, as this special issue shows. Charlotte Purkis has done fine detective work on the events of his 1949 centenary and his fan base at the time the plaque went up.
Translator Eivor Martinus, whose essay evokes a whole life coloured by her discovery of the playwright, reflects on why he never had the breakthrough here enjoyed by Ibsen or Chekhov. His unpredictability and lack of restraint, she has found, can unsettle both audiences and actors.
Strindberg’s acerbic observations on the power of the press in the extract from The New Kingdom, appearing in English for the first time, are vividly rendered by Peter Graves and have uncomfortable echoes in our own day. Graves is another of our outstanding translators who has spent a great deal of time in the company of Strindberg’s texts.
It bodes well for Strindberg’s future that this centenary year has generated various student productions and projects. We report, for example, on a mentoring scheme to produce new versions of some of the one-act plays and a Red Room project running at UCL throughout October. After a slightly slow start, there have been a good many new Strindberg productions around the UK this year, though few British directors have publicised their projects on the official centenary website strindberg2012.se. Our list makes interesting reading, even if it is not fully comprehensive.
Strindberg constantly wrote for the press alongside his other work and was also a prolific lifelong correspondent; we take a look at his highly personal and sometimes explosive articles and letters. His scientific experiments may have been of dubious value, but in the field of early photography at least, as we see in this issue, he did thought-provoking work with his ‘celestographs’. We also shed light on the inspiration for his very first drama, In Rome.
Who would have thought it? Strindberg is now big in the world of comic books, as the introduction to the extract from the graphic-novel version of Inferno reveals. A whole Paris exhibition on the subject was recently mounted in France.
This many-faceted writer is a worthy subject of SBRs first single-author issue for some years, rounded off with our usual broad range of reviews.
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Reading Map in Hand and Other Thoughts on Translating Strindberg
Peter Graves is one of our outstanding translators who has spent a great deal of time in the company of Strindberg's texts. Here he presents his thoughts on translating Strindberg.
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The New Kingdom
Translated and Introduced by Peter Graves
Strindberg's acerbic observations on the power of the press in this extract, appearing in English for the first time, are vividly rendered by Peter Graves and have uncomfortable echoes in our own day.
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Strindberg in My Life
Translator Eivor Martinus, whose essay evokes a whole life coloured by her discovery of the playwright, reflects on why he never had the breakthrough here enjoyed by Ibsen or Chekhov. His unpredictability and lack of restraint, she has found, can unsettle both audiences and actors.
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August Strindberg the Journalist
Strindberg constantly wrote for the press alongside his other work. Agnes Broome presents a portrait of Strindberg as a journalist.
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Corresponding with Strindberg
Strindberg was a prolific lifelong correspondent. Anna Paterson looks at his highly personal and sometimes explosive letters.
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The Artist as a Young Man: August Strindberg's 'I Rom' and the Celebration of a Centenary
Elettra Carbone sheds light on the inspiration for Strindberg's very first drama, I Rom (In Rome).
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The Commemoration of the Strindberg Centenary of 1949 in Britain
The short pier running out into the Thames from the north Kent town of Gravesend was for many years home to a plaque marking one of the very few places in Britain ever visited by world-famous Swedish playwright August Strindberg. The plaque, removed during renovations, now languishes at the back of a crowded storeroom, but the man continues to fascinate and provoke us in equal measure, as this special issue shows. Charlotte Purkis has done fine detective work on the events of his 1949 centenary and his fan base at the time the plaque went up.
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'The Delayed Rays of a Star': Strindberg's Celestographs in the Light of 'Camera Lucida'
Strindberg's scientific experiments may have been of dubious value, but in the field of early photography at least, as Claire Thomson demonstrates, he did thought-provoking work with his ‘celestographs’.
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Strindberg illustrated: Fabian Göranson's graphic-novel version of 'Inferno'
Translated and Introduced by Ruth Urbom
Who would have thought it? Strindberg is now big in the world of comic books, as Ruth Urbom's introduction to an extract from the graphic-novel version of Inferno reveals. A whole Paris exhibition on the subject was recently mounted in France.
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Strindberg's One-Act Plays Mark One Hundred Years
Since the beginning of the 2012 Strindberg centenary, a project has been underway to translate and publish four of Strindberg's one-act plays. These will be published in one volume by Norvik Press in the autumn of 2012 and accompanied by a series of Strindberg events to be held at University College London.
BOOKSHELF: REVIEWS, edited by Anna Paterson
Maria Turtschaninoff, Arra. Legender från Lavora
Söderströms, 2009.
Reviewed by Agnes Broome and Nichola Smalley ▸Read Review
Maria Turtschaninoff, Underfors
Söderströms, 2010.
Reviewed by Agnes Broome and Nichola Smalley ▸Read Review
Isabella Nilsson, Verklighetsprojektet (The Reality Project)
X Publishing, 2011.
Reviewed by Tuva Tod ▸Read Review
Elin Nilsson, Istället för att bara skrika (Instead of Just Screaming)
Alfabeta, 2011.
Reviewed by Kristina Sjögren ▸Read Review
Cilla Naumann, 62 dagar (62 days)
Alfabeta, 2011.
Reviewed by Kristina Sjögren ▸Read Review
Jonatan Brännström, Blixtslukaren (The Lightning Gobbler)
Natur och Kultur, 2012.
Reviewed by Charlotte Berry ▸Read Review
Malte Persson, Resan till världens farligaste land (The Journey to the Most Dangerous Land in the World)
Bonnier Carlsen, 2012.
Reviewed by Anna Tebelius ▸Read Review
Lars Gustafsson, Elden och döttrarna. Valda och nya dikter (The Fire and the Daughters. Selected and New Poems)
Atlantis, 2012.
Reviewed by Carl Otto Werkelid ▸Read Review
Sara Stridsberg, Medealand och andra pjäser (Medealand and Other Plays)
Albert Bonniers förlag, 2012.
Reviewed by Kevin Halliwell ▸Read Review
Carl-Johan Vallgren, Havsmannen (The Merman)
Albert Bonniers förlag, 2012.
Reviewed by Birgitta Thompson ▸Read Review
Lotta Lundberg, Ön (The Island)
Natur och Kultur, 2012.
Reviewed by Birgitta Thompson ▸Read Review
Peter Handberg, Skuggor (Shadows)
Natur och Kultur, 2012.
Reviewed by Sarah Death ▸Read Review
Set Mattson, Ondskans pris (The Price of Evil)
Historiska Media, 2012.
Reviewed by Stephen Dawson ▸Read Review
Michael Tapper, Snuten i skymningslandet. Svenska polisberättelser i roman och film 1965-2010 (The Cop in Land of Twilight. Swedish Police Narratives in Novels and Films 1965-2010)
Nordic Academic Press, 2011.
Reviewed by Anna Paterson ▸Read Review
Barry Forshaw, Death in a Cold Climate
Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.
Reviewed by Charlotte Garbutt ▸Read Review
Lukas Moodysson, Tolv månader i skugga (Twelve Months in Shadow)
Wahlström & Widstrand, 2012.
Reviewed by Henning Koch ▸Read Review
Sara Arrhenius and Magnus Berg (eds), Resan till månen (A Trip to the Moon)
Albert Bonniers förlag, 2012.
Reviewed by Henning Koch ▸Read Review
Anne-Marie Påhlsson, Knapptryckarkompaniet. Rapport från Sveriges riksdag (The Button-Pressing Brigade. Report from the Swedish Parliament)
Atlantis, 2011.
Reviewed by Anna Paterson ▸Read Review
Per Molander, Kunskapen och makten. Om det offentliga beslutfattandets kunskapsförsörjning (The Knowledge and the Power. On public decision-making and the role of knowledge)
Atlantis, 2012.
Reviewed by Anna Paterson ▸Read Review
Niklas Orrenius, Sverige forever in my heart (Sweden forever in my heart)
Natur och Kultur, 2012.
Reviewed by Željka Černok ▸Read Review
Katrine Kielos, Det enda könet. Varför du är förförd av den ekonomiske mannen och hur det förstör ditt liv och världsekonomin (The Only Sex. Why you are seduced by the economic man and how it ruins your life and the world economy)
Albert Bonniers förlag, 2012.
Reviewed by B.J. Epstein ▸Read Review
Erik Andersson, Dag ut och dag in med en dag i Dublin (Day In and Day Out with One Day in Dublin)
Albert Bonniers förlag, 2012.
Reviewed by Martin Murrell ▸Read Review
Fredrik Sjöberg, Den Tranströmerska insektsamlingen (The Tranströmer Insect Collection)
Albert Bonniers förlag, 2011.
Reviewed by Anna Tebelius ▸Read Review
Current Issue: 2018:2
- Johanna Nilsson, from The Greener Abyss
- Karin Boye, from Astarte
- C Claire Thomson, Love Without Lovers, Words Without Images: On Ingmar Bergman's Unrealised Screenplays
- Robin Fulton Macpherson, Remembering Östen Sjöstrand
- Charlotte Berry, Nordic Literary Translators Joan Tate and Patricia Crampton
- Jan Holmberg, from The Writer Ingmar Bergman
- Ingmar Bergman, from Work Diaries 1955-1974
- Jenny Jägerfeld, from Comedy Queen
- Ingmar Bergman, Writing Through a Glass Darkly
- Bookshelf, edited by Fiona Graham
- Just Out and Coming Up