Björn Ranelid is a Swedish

Sweden

Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....

 author from Malmö

Malmö

Malmö , in the southernmost province of Scania, is the third most populous city in Sweden, after Stockholm and Gothenburg.Malmö is the seat of Malmö Municipality and the capital of Skåne County...

. Since the beginning of his career in 1983, Ranelid has published twenty novels and written about five hundred articles in different magazines and newspapers. The author has also made numerous speeches throughout the years since his debut. Ranelid is currently (2004) very active, with five novels published since 2000. He has been living in Stockholm

Stockholm

Stockholm is the capital and the largest city of Sweden and constitutes the most populated urban area in Scandinavia. Stockholm is the most populous city in Sweden, with a population of 851,155 in the municipality , 1.37 million in the urban area , and around 2.1 million in the metropolitan area...

 since 1989.

His works have been translated into French

French language

French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

, English

English language

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

, German

German language

German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....

, Norwegian

Norwegian language

Norwegian is a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Norway, where it is the official language. Together with Swedish and Danish, Norwegian forms a continuum of more or less mutually intelligible local and regional variants .These Scandinavian languages together with the Faroese language...

 and Finnish

Finnish language

Finnish is the language spoken by the majority of the population in Finland Primarily for use by restaurant menus and by ethnic Finns outside Finland. It is one of the two official languages of Finland and an official minority language in Sweden. In Sweden, both standard Finnish and Meänkieli, a...

.

Synopsis

David Saxon is an American who after fighting in Vietnam

Vietnam

Vietnam – sometimes spelled Viet Nam , officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam – is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by China to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and the South China Sea –...

deserts and finds a haven in Sweden. Saxon's younger brother was killed in the war and is mourned as a hero, whilst himself was disowned by his family - parents, wife and children. Being young, he decides to start a new life in the capital of Sweden, Stockholm. He learns Swedish, makes friends, and finds a job as a janitor in a school. Through his work he gets acquainted with many of the children and young adolescents, some of which come from Stockholm's more troubled suburbs. Among them are Selma and Joppe, sister and brother. Later, after Saxon's retirement, Selma runs away from home and asks the former janitor for help and shelter. Her brother, who since he left school has been searching his fortune in the criminal world of the capital, has been found murdered. Selma's determination to find the murderer is as strong as Saxon's will to get to know young Selma under her tough surface.

Comments

Ranelid tells his stories in a non-linear fashion, and the narrator travels in time as the plot goes on. From Birmingham, Alabama, to the jungle in Vietnam to the isles of Stockholm, the story tells more of the human nature than of the murder, and spans over almost the entire adult life of Saxon. The novel covers both an ant's view of political history since the sixties and a deeply philosophical introspective of what values really matter in life. Ranelid paints a portrait of a man who has both inflicted and suffered loss and who with time surmounts his griefs with the help of love and care.

Selected works

• Den överlevande trädgårdsmästaren (1983)
• I glastiden (1985)
• David Hills obotliga minne (1987)
• Påfågelns längtan (1989)
• Mördarens öga (1990)
• Mästaren (1992)
• Mitt namn skall vara Stig Dagerman (1993)
• Synden (1994)
• Kärlekens innersta rum (1996)
• Till alla människor på jorden och i himlen (1997)
• Tusen kvinnor och en sorg (1998)
• Min son fäktas mot världen (2000)
• Krigaren (2001)
• David Puma och drottning Silvia (2002)
• Kvinnan är första könet (2003)
• Ord (2003)
• I Give You My Finest Words - Aphorisms and Metaphors in Swedish, French, English and German (2009) http://www.beijbombooks.se/?page=1_0