A Q&A with Ia Genberg and Kira Josefsson, author and translator of The Details

How does it feel to be longlisted for the International Booker Prize 2024, and what would winning the prize mean to you? Would it also have an impact on literature originating from Sweden? 

It’s a great honour, of course, and very exciting and somewhat unreal to be longlisted for this award. I had no thoughts of translations or foreign nominations when I wrote the book, so I am quite overwhelmed by this. The thought of winning is not on my mind, but I assume – and hope – that it might mean that literature from Scandinavia would reach a larger audience abroad. 

What were the inspirations behind the book? What made you want to tell this particular story? 

I started just as the woman in the novel starts, in a COVID fever in April 2020, when I went to my bookshelf and picked up a random book that fell open in my hands, revealing a small inscription from the person who had given me the book 25 years earlier. At the feverish sight of these handwritten lines, I was struck by a very clear memory that played in a certain tone in my head, and from that experience, I simply started writing. 

How long did it take to write the book, and what does your writing process look like? Do you type or write in longhand? Are there multiple drafts? Is the plot and structure intricately mapped out in advance?  

It took me one and a half years to write it. It was a very slow process because I spent most days either deleting or rewriting everything, over and over again. I could start one working day with thirty pages and end it with twenty-five. It became my method in this project, the habit of tuning the piano before I could play it. There was never a ‘flow’ in the usual, speedy, sense, but there was certainly a flow in my head during the few moments when I was able to match the melancholic tone I heard with the text I was writing. It was an exhausting but very satisfying process. 

What was the experience of working with the book’s translator, Kira Josefsson, like? How closely did you work together on the English edition? Were there any surprising moments during your collaboration, or joyful moments, or challenges? 

It’s a great privilege to have a book translated into English, and very soon I realised that Kira was a total genius. I haven’t interfered with anything, of course; I just answered questions and felt this enormous admiration for her work. We discussed some small things that turned out to be specifically Swedish, like the construction of the (illegal) machine used for distilling alcohol, and words with different cultural connotations. It was a stimulating and pleasant dialogue for me, and I learned a lot. My spontaneous reaction when I read her manuscript was that this text is much better than the Swedish original. First of all, she captured the tone completely, which was my main concern. But there is also something with the lightness in Kira´s English that gives the text a new richness. 

Tell us about a book originally written in Swedish that you would recommend to English readers. How has it left a lasting impression on you? 

Lina Wolff’s novels are so well-written. I believe all of them are translated into English. I recommend starting with Carnality and The Polyglot Lovers. Her texts are brutal and complex, yet very nuanced. 

Do you have a favourite International Booker Prize-winning or shortlisted novel and, if so, why? 

I really admire Jenny Erpenbeck’s work. She tends to write different books each time and she also kind of streches the very form of a novel, which is very inspiring. I also appreciated Time Shelter by Georgi Gospodinov, which I read during Christmas. 

What role do you think translated fiction plays in promoting a more inclusive and diverse literary canon, and how can we encourage more people to read it? 

A major role, I believe. Translators and interpreters are living bridges; they should swim in gold and honey. They play this fundamentally key role in the exchange between cultures, countries, and people. The importance is not just literary; it’s also political and, in some sense, human. I mean, who are we if we don’t connect with each other?

What was your path to becoming a reader – what did you read as a child and what role did storytelling play in your younger years? Was there one book in particular that captured your imagination? 

My mom used to work as a librarian, and both she and my dad encouraged reading from an early age. I was hungry for the world as a child, attempting to read Shakespeare in English during fourth-grade reading periods, and over time I roamed the shelves from Astrid Lindgren to feel-good to C.S. Lewis to whatever Henry Miller my parents happened to have in the living room. The first time I remember thinking about style was reading Hjalmar Söderberg’s canonical Doctor Glas, an intensely atmospheric novel that captures a certain sensual side of Stockholm; blue nights hanging low over the cemetery, pale dusks, lemony moons. But I would basically read anything that found its way into my hands, including a lot of magazines and newspapers, a habit that I imagine has helped me in the translator’s task of ventriloquizing many different kinds of writing.  

Tell us about your path to becoming a translator. Were there any books that inspired you to embark on this career? 

I was always interested in languages, in the new view and texture offered by a different window onto the world. My mom is Finnish and though I never truly learned to speak the language, growing up in a multilingual environment definitely shaped me. I moved from Sweden when I was 18 and ultimately ended up in Canada, where I did my undergrad. By the time I’d finished college the English language was quite deep and vast in me, so I started doing some translations as part of my job as an editor at a bilingual magazine. I didn’t consider translation as a career, however, until I came across a novel called Araben by Pooneh Rohi (forthcoming as The Arab from longlisted MTO Press!). I was struck both by the Rohi’s writing and the fact that the book painted a picture of Sweden that was more complicated than the social democratic paradise a lot of foreigners seemed to picture when I told them where I was from. I really, really wanted to translate it. By that time I had moved to New York, and worked one day a week at a bookstore coffee shop where I happened to meet the Japanese translator Sam Bett. We got to talking, I mentioned my project, and he pointed me in the direction of a bunch of resources that opened up a whole new world for me, a world that immediately felt like home.  

What are your reading habits under normal circumstances? Which book or books are you reading at the moment, and why?  

Generally, I try to read both in English and in Swedish. I’m currently recovering from ankle surgery and finally picked up Emily Wilson’s translation of The Odyssey, a roaming story for a period of circumscribed movement. Her work, including the translator’s note and intro, is such a tour de force. (“Tell me about a complicated man”—whew, what an opening line!) I’m also listening to the audiobook of The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine by Rashid Khalidi, highly recommended for a deep dive into a history many of our politicians and media outlets would do well to consider.