Det är natten

"It’s an essay about the double nature of writing. That the writer has a persona that is pushed in front of him or her, a persona that faces the world; and then there’s the person who writes the books in seclusion. How do these two characters work together? How does the surrounding world perceive them? The amazing thing about this book-length essay is that she manages to describe this so it becomes a description of the dual faces of all people. At the same time she unfolds her own reality up against the fiction she writes and she tries to describe the creative process. I enjoyed it very much. I actually enjoyed reading it more than the texts Margarite Duras has written on the same themes. Det är natten was on the Swedish bestseller lists for quite a while which is pretty impressive for a book-length essay. I hope it will be translated someday. It’s a story about a young woman whose lover—and the father of her infant girl Dream—has gone to prison, and now she’s left alone with the responsibility of parenting and cleaning up after the criminal mess her partner has left her in. It’s a book about loneliness, about survival and the ambivalent feelings we have for those we love; our friends, our children, our partners. It’s a dark novel with a very sensual and sharp eye."