In Smile of the Midsummer Night, best-selling author Lars Gustafsson and Agneta Blomqvist present a very personal guide to their Swedish homeland. Setting off from the far South, their journey takes them up to Norrland, from the farms of Scania to Laponian, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. But it is the idyllic fjord in Bohulän, located in the Västmanland region, as well as Mälar Lake and Stockholm that they call home. Throughout, Gustafsson and Blomqvist are full of entertaining suggestions for excursions, including journeys through forests and moors where you can take in the odd elk or wolf along the way and visits to August Strindberg’s and Kurt Tucholsky’s graves.
The first work of contemporary travel writing about Sweden by Swedish writers to have been translated into English, Smile of the Midsummer Night is a loving and poetic ode to this beautiful nation and a must-have for anyone interested in Scandinavia.
Lars Gustafsson is one of Sweden's most eminent authors. His oeuvre has been translated into 15 languages and recognised with many awards, including the Prix International Charles Veillon des Essais (1983), the Heinrich Steffens Preis (1986), Una Vita per la Litteratura (1989), a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship for poetry (1994), and many others. Agneta Blomqvist was born in 1942. She is a teacher of religion and literature and the editor of a major encyclopedia of world literature.
