Karl Kofi Ahlqvist (b. 1992) was educated at the Author School in Copenhagen. He grew up on Gotland but now lives in Malmö, where he works with homeless people.

Ahlqvist's texts are often populated by people living in the shadows of society – homeless people, prostitutes, immigrants, people on long-term sick leave – whose voices are rarely heard in contemporary literature.

Restless Nights is his first novel, for which he was awarded the prestigious Katapult Prize for best fiction debut of 2023. The motivation details how he, with psychological complexity, exposes the vulnerability of people in a capitalist era in their aimless search for money, intimacy and meaning.

Agent: Erik Larsson

Published Nirstedt, 2023
Genre Literary fiction
Pages 224

Rights sold
Danish: Forlaget Turbine

The 2024 winner of the Katapult Prize for best fiction debut

Restless Nights was published in 2023 to great critical acclaim. It centres around a young man who moves between Malmö in the south of Sweden and Copenhagen in Denmark.

On the Danish side, he works in a café and meets older women for money. His father lives in Malmö, a bon vivant who drives a taxi and runs a moving company despite not having a driver’s license, always ready to help family and friends, but rarely involved with his son.

The book has been called a unique and necessary update of the Swedish working-class literature, showing how class, racism and sexuality are closely connected.