Friday 11 March 2011

Swedish Novel in English?

Every week I meet English people who want to read my Award-Winning Swedish Young Adult Novel, Punkindustriell Hårdrockare med Attityd ("Punk Industrial Hard Rocker with Attitude"). I hope the whole novel will be translated one day (by someone who's not me ...)! My agent has showed an interest and asked me to write a synopsis and translate a sample chapter, so that's what I've been working on this week.

First I re-read the novel. I've only read it once before ... A strange experience reading your own novel, especially now when I have a fair bit of distance to it. It felt like I was reading but not concentrating as I knew what was going to happen. Yet I surprised myself. There were so many paragraphs that seemed new to me, and I got confused by my own structure ... As the novel is set over the course of three years there are obviously big leaps and you kind of have to fill in those gaps yourself ... Or perhaps I just got confused because I was reading in a feverish state, being confined to my bed by a nasty flu ...

Anyway. I did manage to write a synopsis, but my playwright friend thought it sounded more like a travel itinerary! Synopsises are hard, and sometimes don't do the novel justice, but I'm happy with what I managed to write anyway. As for the sample chapter ... It was hard to find a chapter without Swedish slang or other typical Swedish references, but in the end I settled for a neutral chapter where the main character is in her bedroom, not knowing what to do with the sample condoms she got from a Youth Clinic person visiting her college. There's also a short dialogue with her Dad. I do hope this chapter is enough to give the agent a flavour of the novel ... The flavour is punk industrial hard rock with attitude!

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