Female portrait in historical novels

How do you describe a woman who lived during the middle ages, the renaissance or almost any time period before the 20th century? Often there are no descriptions of their life, their way of living, what they looked like and definitely no written words from them, most of them time not even a signature. The exception would be monarchs and noble women, but they do not belong to the majority.

This is what gets interesting when authors of historical novels try to describe these women. Can they make it real enough for us to believe them? Or do they simply just take the easy way out and exclude them from their stories. The Swedish writer Agneta Pleijel has made one approach to the subject. In her book, The queen’s surgeon, she simply says I don’t know, but perhaps it was like this. She does it so well and make it fit into the story so well that you agree with her.

There are other approaches to this problem, some writers simply leave out the women and let them be merely background props. This however, I believe is to cheat the reader of half the story. But then again, it is called fiction for a reason.
Josefine

My recommendations: The Orange Girl by Lena Kallenberg

Christmas gift

This is a Christmas gift idea for a writer or a book lover, or why not a New years gift for your self?

The Swedish designer Jan Lundqvist has really come up with a gem for booklovers when he designed some very funky bookends. It is a collection of Swedish writers made in blackened steel plate and is about 15x15 cm. Another brilliant feature of the bookends is to place it against a wall and light a tea light in front of it and the figure will make a reflection on the wall.

I think this is a great Christmas gift to booklovers all over the world. For a foreigner not accustomed to Swedish writer, these might work as an inspiration to read their books.
Josefine

My recommendations: The wonderful adventures of Nils by Selma Lagerlöf

Swedish Authors: Henning Mankell

You may have heard about the Swedish writer Henning Mankell, his books about the criminal detective Kurt Wallander has been translated into many languages. The Wallander series has what every other crime novels have. A main person, in this case Kurt Wallander, who is a criminal inspector at the police in a small town called Ystad in Sweden. He is divorced and has a daughter. He is not very good with romantic relationships and he seems to be married to work. Have you heard it before? To me it sounds like every other crime novel I have ever read. It is not that the books about Wallander is badly written, they are thrilling and you are not really sure how it will end, but at the same time, it feels like I have read the story before.

I have read many of his books that aren’t part of the Wallander series (some of which I have recommended in this blog). They bring up subjects that are important and touch your soul on a whole other level than a crime novel would do. The most recent Wallander book I read was TeaBag, it brings up the problem of refugees who live underground in Sweden. In Comedia Infantil, Mankell writes about children living in the streets in Brazil. Another book (Vindens son in Swedish, I have yet to find the title in English) tells us the story about a black boy taken to Sweden from Africa during the 19th century and is shown around on different institutions in Sweden like an animal.
All of these books leave an impression in my brain. It was years since I read both Comedia Infantil and Vindens son, but I can still vividly bring up the feeling I had when I read them. There are very few books that move me like that, but when you find them they are going to last forever.
Josefine

My recommendations: Comedia Infantil by Henning Mankell