Author and journalist MARIT KAPLA was born in 1970 in the small village of Osebol in the mid-western parts of Sweden. In 2019, she debuted with the book OSEBOL, in which she interviewed all the forty or so residents of her hometown in a work which would grant her the 2019 August Prize for best fictional book, the Borås Tidning’s Debutant Prize of 2020, as well as a shortlist placement for the British Academy Book Prize for Global Cultural Understanding (winner to be announced on the 26th of October).

Her new work, LOVE IN SWEDISH, was published in autumn 2022 and was made into a feature-length documentary of the same name by filmmaker Staffan Julén. LOVE IN SWEDISH was nominated for the EU Prize for Literature 2023.

Agent: Erik Larsson

Osebol is a village near the river Klaraälven in northern Värmland, a forest dense landscape known for its astonishing nature. Since the middle of the last century, many have left as the lumber industry has been automatized and more and more people move to the cities.

The shops have closed, the ski slope has grown thick with weeds, and the bridge across the river is closed to traffic. But still, life occurs. Both those who have inherited their farms for generations, as well as those who have come from near and far, live here. People age and children grow up.

Awarded the August Prize 2019 and the Borås Tidning’s Debutant Prize 2020, OSEBOL is an interview book by the journalist Marit Kapla, who grew up in Osebol. She has interviewed close to all of the approximately forty grown inhabitants between the ages of 18 and 92 who live in the village today. Their life stories convey a multi-faceted account of the everyday life in a small village, both from the past, the present, and with thoughts of the future. People’s grief, joy and humour paints a detailed, personal and living depiction of Swedish and global contemporary history.

REVIEWS

‘What makes this book so captivating and so strangely engaging? It's probably just that OSEBOL bears witness to destinies of completely ordinary lives.’
- The Observer

‘A grand and deeply moving elegy.’
- Dagens Nyheter

‘An amazing and lyrical book full of life!’
- Aftonbladet

‘The eight-hundred pages are a delight!’
- Expressen

Published Teg publishing, 2022
Genre NON Fiction
Pages 592

Renowned Swedish author Marit Kapla returns with a new title in the same form as her August Prize-winning book OSEBOL – VOICES FROM A SWEDISH VILLAGE, the unique narrative style that the The Guardian described as a “text laid out like a poem, or like a river, with line breaks and wide margins”. This time she leaves village life for something a greater subject – perhaps the greatest of all – namely, love. In LOVE IN SWEDISH, Kapla interviews a series of people of different ages, genders and backgrounds on the subject of love and what it means to them.

In her signature style, Kapla marries prose poetry with investigative journalism, a technique which has earned her the August Prize, The Borås Newspaper’s Debutant Prize and a shortlist placement for the British Academy Book Prize for Global Cultural Understanding (winner to be announced on the 26th of October).

Her new book, LOVE IN SWEDISH, sees Kapla speaking to people from all over Sweden, from the most southernmost point to the icy norths – proving that even us we Swedes, known to the world as private and bleak, can open our hearts to the complexities and cyclonic feelings of love. The unique experiences and formulations of the people interviewed become the core to of a poignant portrayal of the conditions of love in our time.