Katarina Matsson made her first book as a 4-year old in her hometown of Uppsala, Sweden. Since then she’s been writing in one way or another, since 2004 as a full-time journalist. Over the years she’s lived in Paris, Bucharest, and Stockholm but at the moment she calls New York City’s Lower East Side home. She loves modern American writers like Nicole Krauss, Joan Didion, Siri Hustvedt, John Currie Jr., and Gary Shteyngart. And—although she adores Lisbeth Salander—Katarina hopes that “Swedish literature” will soon take on another meaning than Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.
An invented language, off-stage heroes, searing political comedy. Katarina Matsson sits down with award-winning Swedish playwright and novelist Jonas Hassen Khemiri to discuss translation, the power-struggle of words, rats, germs, leaving home to write about it, and why hearing voices doesn’t necessarily mean you’re crazy.
