Jonas Gardell, born 2 November 1963 in Enebyberg

Enebyberg

Enebyberg is a suburban area of Stockholm, Sweden, part of Danderyd Municipality, Stockholm County. It was founded in the beginning of the 1900s and became a municipal community in 1914. Enebyberg later merged with Danderyd, Stocksund and Djursholm to form Danderyd Municipality. It is located very...

, Stockholm County

Stockholm County

Stockholm County is a county or län on the Baltic sea coast of Sweden. It borders Uppsala County and Södermanland County. It also borders Mälaren and the Baltic Sea. The city of Stockholm is the capital of Sweden. Stockholm County is divided by the historic provinces of Uppland and Södermanland...

, is a Swedish novelist, playwright, screenwriter and comedian. He is the brother of religion scholar Mattias Gardell

Mattias Gardell

Hans Bertil Mattias Gardell is a Swedish scholar of comparative religion. He is the current holder of the Nathan Söderblom Chair of Comparative Religion at Uppsala University, Sweden....

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Gardell's first novel

Novel

A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....

, Passionsspelet (The Passion Play), was published in 1985. Since then, he has written some ten novels, including En Komikers Uppväxt (A Comedian Growing Up), which became a TV series. He has also written several other books, nine plays and two screenplays that were made into movies, including Livet är en Schlager (Life Is A Schlager). His novels are not yet available in English.

In 2006, more than 20 years after his first novel was published, Gardell is one of Sweden's most famous stand-up comedians and probably the country's most well-known gay man. His partner is the Finnish-Swedish-American writer and TV presenter Mark Levengood

Mark Levengood

Mark Levengood, born 10 July 1964 in North Carolina, is a Swedish-speaking Finn who grew up in Helsinki. He is a journalist, writer, and talk-show host, and is the registered partner of Jonas Gardell. They have two children, a boy, who is Gardell's biological child, and a girl, who is Levengood's...

. Gardell and Levengood are each father of a son and a daughter, respectively. He performed his own play Tillfällig gäst i ditt liv (Temporary guest in your life) (2007) at the Scala Theater in Stockholm.