In late 1946, Stig Dagerman was assigned by the Swedish newspaper Expressen to report on life in Germany immediately after the fall of the Third Reich. First published in Sweden in 1947, German Autumn, a collection of the articles written for that assignment, was unlike any other reporting at the time. While most Allied and foreign journalists spun their writing on the widely held belief that the German people deserved their fate, Dagerman disagreed and reported on the humanness of the men and women ruined by the war-their guilt and suffering. Dagerman was already a prominent writer in Sweden, but the publication and broad reception of German Autumn throughout Europe established him as a compassionate journalist and led to the long-standing international influence of the book. Presented here in its first American edition with a compelling new foreword by Mark Kurlansky, Dagerman's essays on the tragic aftermath of war, suffering, and guilt are as hauntingly relevant today amid current global conflict as they were sixty years ago.

In the 1960s and 1970s Robin Fulton Macpherson was active in Scottish literary life as a poet, reviewer and editor. Since 1973 his home base has been in Norway and in the decades since he has built a solid reputation as a translator of Scandinavian poets, such as Tomas Tranströmer, Kjell Espmark and Harry Martinson from Swedish and Olav H. Hauge from Norwegian. His A Northern Habitat: Collected Poems 1960-2010 (Marick Press, 2013) was described by Carol Rumens in The Guardian as "a major achievement, enriching the habitat of contemporary letters in our own archipelago and beyond." John Glenday, in Northwords Now, referred to the book as "a real treasure of a collection, a weighty, important reminder that Fulton Macpherson is a prominent figure in Scottish poetry... His poetry is enduring as granite. It will weather well", while Peter M. McDonald, in Rain Taxi, felt certain that "A Northern Habitat will stand the test of time. It is arguably the most important book yet from a Scottish poet in this new millennium." Ancient Light is his third Shearsman collection, following 2020's Arrivals of Light. "Many of these [ poems in Arrivals of Light ] consist of just a few lines but they're suffused with a remarkable keenness of eye and, especially, freshness of thought and phrase. The very title ... speaks to a sense of continuing revelation, or more accurately revelations." -Chris Powici, Northwords Now

Kjell Espmark (b.1930) was Professor of Comparative Literature at Stockholm University from 1978 to 1995 and has been a member of The Swedish Academy since 1981, serving as Chairman of The Nobel Committee from 1988 to 2004. He has published twenty volumes of poetry, ten novels, and over a dozen volumes of literary criticism. His many awards include The Bellman Prize, The Tranströmer Prize, Il Premio Capri and Il Premio Internazionale Camaiore. He is an officer of L'ordre de Mérite. He has been translated into over twenty languages. Of the Spanish version of his latest book of poetry, Martin Lopez-Vega wrote in El Mundo: "The Creation confirms that we are faced with one of the most important poets of our time." Many of Espmark's poems are dramatic monologues in which the dead, some famous, some anonymous, speak to us, hoping for our attention. Another consistent feature of his poetry, and one which we can see extending over six decades, is the coherence we find within each volume, echoes and cross-references linking poems not only within a single collection but from book to book.

In the 1960s and 1970s Robin Fulton Macpherson was active in Scottish literary life as a poet, reviewer and editor. Since 1973 his home base has been in Norway and, in the decades since, he has built a solid reputation as a translator of Scandinavian poets, such as Tomas Tranströmer, Kjell Espmark and Harry Martinson from Swedish and Olav H. Hauge from Norwegian. His A Northern Habitat: Collected Poems 1960–2010 (Marick Press, 2013) was described by Carol Rumens in The Guardian as “a major achievement, enriching the habitat of contemporary letters in our own archipelago and beyond.” John Glenday, in Northwards Now, referred to the book as “a real treasure of a collection, a weighty, important reminder that Fulton Macpherson is a prominent figure in Scottish poetry… His poetry is enduring as granite. It will weather well”, while Peter M. McDonald, in Rain Taxi, felt certain that “A Northern Habitat will stand the test of time. It is arguably the most important book yet from a Scottish poet in this new millennium.”

Poetry. Richard Price hailed him as "a brilliant poet of memory. Here are reflections that are in turn puzzled, fond, analytical; beautifully austere." His poems need time and reward the time spent.