SIGGE EKLUND

 
 

SIGGE EKLUND is an author, screenwriter, producer, editor, director and podcaster currently residing in Los Angeles. He debuted in 1999 with his novel Synanthrope, published by Albert Bonniers Förlag. Since then, he has published several more novels, including It’s 1988 and It Just Started Snowing, Waltz of the Werewolf, The Last Myth and Into the Labyrinth. His books have been translated into 16 languages.  

Alongside his writing career, Sigge is also one half of the cultural, literary, media duo “Alex & Sigge” with Alex Schulman. Together they produce one of Scandinavia’s biggest and most popular podcasts, drawing 300 000 listeners a week. The “Alex & Sigge” podcast has won the Grand Swedish Podcast Prize three years in a row and is continuously on the top lists.

Sigge is currently directing his feature film debut, A Part of You, starring Zara Larsson, for Netflix, set to premiere in 2024. His latest novel, THE GROUP, was published to great critical acclaim in 2023.

Photo: Märta Thisner

 
 

WORKS

THE GROUP

 

PUBLISHED NOVEMBER 2023, ALBERT BONNIERS Förlag
genre LITERARY THRILLER
PAGES 303

RIGHTS SOLD
fINNISH: Johnny kniga
uk/commonwealth: Ithaka Press (Bonnier Books)

 

Feverish, seductive and intoxicating, THE GROUP offers a blend of suspense and indulgence reminiscent of Donna Tartt’s The Secret History and Patricia Highsmith’s Rebecca. 

It’s summer and twenty-five-year-old Hanna arrives in Madrid to work as an intern in the cavernous, fly-infested basement archives of the Prado Museum, where Goya’s “Black Paintings” are housed. Hanna has a near-obsessive fascination with Goya, especially these morbid later paintings (Saturn Devouring his Son, Two Old Men Eating Soup etc.)

At night she wanders out into the city and watches the beautiful people, living a life that for penniless Hanna is out of reach. Everything changes one night when she meets the group. Three young, beautiful, glamorous and vibrant people who seem devoted to squeezing every last drop out of each scorching summer night. They drink, smoke, talk and dance their way through Madrid’s nocturnal summer streets. There is always a new restaurant to try, a new local delicacy to sample, another bottle of wine to drink. 

Like a moth to a flame, Hanna is drawn into their enchanting circle. All three of them, Samuel, the intellectual and aspiring diplomat, Leah, the glamorous model, and Tom, the poetic writer-to-be, seem to come from a completely different world, a world of privilege and elegance, worldliness and opportunity. And so they do. Lacking the resources that the group has, Hanna soon struggles to keep up. One day, down in the basement archives of the museum, Hanna discovers something that may be her ticket into the group’s privileged world. An etching by one of the great masters that isn’t registered in the museum’s database. The forbidden thought crosses her mind: no one would miss this if it disappeared… 

Desperate to gain the group’s approval, Hanna entangles herself in a web of lies and deceit that grows bigger and more dangerous by the day. As her fascination deepens, her sanity and rationality start to unravel and Hanna spirals into a realm of obsession that borders on madness. How far is Hanna willing to go to achieve the life of her dreams, that seems just within reach? Or, will all her lies and deceptions be exposed, and the group find out who she really is? 

 

REVIEWS

“Such a combination of both craftsmanship and artistic ambition is unusual in contemporary Swedish literature. [...] A bingeable tale about unhealthy but not unreasonable desires." – Expressen

“Sigge Eklund is in many ways a skilled storyteller and once again demonstrates psychological acuity […] His new novel truly grips you and draws you into the narrative, which becomes increasingly unsettling as the author delves deeper beneath the well-groomed surface of the characters. THE GROUP becomes harder and harder to put down, and the outcome is refreshingly uncertain right up to the end.” – Borås Tidning

"Sigge Eklund’s portraits are empathetic and unforgiving at the same time [...] He is no mediocre stylist. At times, he can capture the atmosphere in a dark room, how the art in the museum begins to interact with Hanna's emotional injuries, making this a dangerous piece of literature. It’s literature like this that can make the reader's psyche wobble for a moment and scare themselves.” – GP

”Stylistically confident and with the ability to create moods with prose and a dramatic pull in the story. [...] The text flows over the pages; THE GROUP is a real page-turner. The engine of the novel is Hanna herself and the mysteries spun around her character.” – Sydsvenskan

”THE GROUP is like one long fever dream.” – Lundagård

”THE GROUP evokes associations with Patricia Highsmith's antihero Tom Ripley, an equally empty and tormented figure like Hanna, completely without scruples. Just like Ripley, Hanna ingratiates herself into a circle of wealthy acquaintances, and just like Ripley, she is always on the verge of being exposed as a fraud. There are also similarities with Donna Tartt's The Secret History. [...] THE GROUP offers magnificent entertainment!" – Geffle Dagblad

 

PUBLISHERS’ STATEMENTS

”There is something about Sigge Eklund’s magnificent novel THE GROUP that is both very familiar and completely new. You will immediately sense that the suspense it creates is in the vein of Donna Tartt and Patricia Highsmith: subtle, psychological, and foreboding rather than overtly violent and generic. 

But you will also feel, even while recognizing its literary debt to a zeitgeist chronicler like Bret Easton Ellis, that it depicts behaviors and psyches that can only be of this specific moment in time, of our hyper-digitalized world, where every dream demands to be made flesh in pixels and filters, and our personal histories and sorrows are transformed and eventually obliterated by our desire to become something completely shining and new.

You should read this novel for its analytic rigor, for its splendid dissection of a society where reality is all but suspended, but also for the existential thrill and indelible horror it provides!
- Daniel Sandström, Albert Bonniers Förlag (SE)

“Sex, glamour, subterfuge, and art theft; Sigge Eklund’s The Group has it all. I couldn’t stop reading this brilliant novel about a young outsider who will stop at nothing to be part of the elite.

Eklund is a master of atmosphere, taking you from the searing streets of Madrid to the chill of a museum’s forgotten basement archive to the gleaming, always-just-out-of-sight world of luxury villas and exclusive parties. What begins as the story of a young woman moving abroad for an internship soon blooms into a full-blown tale of hidden identity and borderline psychopathy, all culminating in a fiendishly satisfying ending. 

The Group is The Talented Mr Ripley for the 21st century and I’m delighted that Ithaka Press will publish it in 2024.”
- Sarah Braybrooke, Ithaka Press (UK)


”I immediately felt a tenderness for Hanna's strong longing to belong to the beautiful and successful crowd. Sigge Eklund's detailed descriptions makes the book progress like an enjoyable movie, with the warm and fresh breeze of the Mediterranean constantly present. The suspense persists from the very first page!”
– Nina Karjalainen, Johnny Kniga (FI)