A blisteringly frank autobiographical novel by Sweden's great man of letters - for readers of K. O. Knausgaard's My Struggle. "Some life. Some novel . . . Wonderful, brave, evocative . . . It is a remarkable story, and Enquist is remarkably frank in narrating every last detail" Herald When everything began so well, how could it turn out so badly? What was it about Hjoggboele, a farming village in the northernmost part of Sweden, that created so many idiots - and writers? There was nothing to indicate that P.O. Enquist would be stricken by an addiction to writing. Nothing in his family - honest, hardworking people. Not a trace of poetry. And yet he worked his way, via journalism, novels and plays, to the centre of Swedish politics and cultural life. His books garnered prize after prize. His plays ran for decades and premiered on Broadway. Why then, living with a new wife in Paris, does he hole up in their palatial Champes-Elysees apartment, talking only to his cat? How is it that he wakes to find himself in an uncoupled carriage on a railway siding in Hamburg, two - or was it three? - days after the first-night party finished? And what is it that drives him to run shoeless through the deep January snow of an Icelandic plain, leaving the lights of the drying out clinic far behind? Narrating in the third person, as if he were merely a character in the eventful, perplexing and ultimately triumphantly redemptive drama of his own life, P.O. Enquist is as elliptical as Karl Ove Knausgaard is exhaustive. Clear-eyed, rueful, written with elegance and humour, this is the singular story of a remarkable man.

The first collection by Sweden's foremost contemporary playwright NIGHT OF THE TRIBADES (1975) centres around the triangular relationship between August Strindberg, the actress Marie Caroline David and Siri von Essen. It has been translated into twenty languages including a short run on Broadway. THE IMAGE MAKERS (1998) deals with Selma Lagerlof's father and his alcoholism whilst THE RAIN MAKERS is a fascinating study of Hans Christian Anderson. THE HOUR OF THE LYNX: "Enquist's play, feelingly translated from the Swedish offers a profound exploration of spirituality, love and faith within a text that is grippingly dramatic, unfailingly absorbing and often upliftingly lyrical."At a time when young writers were looking for new forms of literary expression, Enquist settled for an investigative style, and attempt to reconstruct events reported to have happened, but where the truth is often too inaccessible...it was a style that was to remain Enquist's literary landmark characterising both his novels and his plays" Contemporary World Authors ed. Tracey Chevalier

A blisteringly frank autobiographical novel by Sweden's great man of letters - for readers of K. O. Knausgaard's My Struggle. "Some life. Some novel . . . Wonderful, brave, evocative . . . It is a remarkable story, and Enquist is remarkably frank in narrating every last detail" Herald When everything began so well, how could it turn out so badly? What was it about Hjoggboele, a farming village in the northernmost part of Sweden, that created so many idiots - and writers? There was nothing to indicate that P.O. Enquist would be stricken by an addiction to writing. Nothing in his family - honest, hardworking people. Not a trace of poetry. And yet he worked his way, via journalism, novels and plays, to the centre of Swedish politics and cultural life. His books garnered prize after prize. His plays ran for decades and premiered on Broadway. Why then, living with a new wife in Paris, does he hole up in their palatial Champes-Elysees apartment, talking only to his cat? How is it that he wakes to find himself in an uncoupled carriage on a railway siding in Hamburg, two - or was it three? - days after the first-night party finished? And what is it that drives him to run shoeless through the deep January snow of an Icelandic plain, leaving the lights of the drying out clinic far behind? Narrating in the third person, as if he were merely a character in the eventful, perplexing and ultimately triumphantly redemptive drama of his own life, P.O. Enquist is as elliptical as Karl Ove Knausgaard is exhaustive. Clear-eyed, rueful, written with elegance and humour, this is the singular story of a remarkable man.

An award-winning historical novel exposing the scandals of eighteenth-century Denmark, weaving a wide range of historical characters from Voltaire to Catherine the Great to George III It is the 1760s, the height of the Enlightenment. The young King of Denmark, Christian VII, is a half-wit. His queen, the English princess Caroline Mathilde, has fallen in love with his most trusted advisor, the court physician Struensee. Guldberg, a cold-blooded religious fanatic, is determined to annihilate the Enlightenment ideas Struensee is introducing to Denmark - whoever prevails in their bitter ideological battle will control not only the king but the nation state. With adultery, insanity, enlightenment and the bluest blood, Enquist brilliantly recasts a dramatic era of Danish history into a tale of ruthless political ambition and personal betrayal. 'One of those rare, magical books that creates its own world so modestly that it is only halfway through that you realise you have been entranced' Telegraph

"The love that dare not speak its name . . ." Sweden, 1949. A boy of 15, cutting across a garden, chances upon a woman of 51. What ensues is cataclysmic, life-altering. All the more because it cannot be spoken of. Can it never be spoken of? Looking back in late old age at an encounter that transformed him suddenly yet utterly, P.O. Enquist, a titan of Swedish letters, has decided to "come out" - but in ways entirely novel and unexpected. He has written the book that smoldered unwritten within him his entire life. The book he had always seen as the one he could not write. This poignant memoir of love as a religious experience - as a modern form of the Resurrection - is also a deeply felt reflection on the transitoriness of friendship, the fraught nature of family relationships, and the importance of giving voice to what cannot be forgotten. A parable as hauntingly intense as any Bergman film. Translated from the Swedish by Deborah Bragan-Turner