Håkan Lindquist - A short presentation in English

I was born and raised in the small coastal town Oskarshamn, in Småland, Sweden. I grew up with three brothers and three sisters. My earliest memory is from the small one-room apartment where we lived until I was fourteen months old. I’m sitting on the floor – or rather on the potty – watching my parents. The picture is very vivid. My parents are sitting by the kitchen table, they are deeply absorbed by some game. It’s evening. There’s a lamp hanging over the table. The light almost reaches the door at the other end of the room. The door is ajar. Behind it, my three elder brothers are sleeping. It’s one early memory. One of many.

During my childhood I lived in Döderhult, just outside Oskarshamn. I moved away from my family when I was sixteen, two months after I had finished the nine-year compulsory school. When I was nineteen I moved to Stockholm, where I still live. Since a couple of years, my friend and I also have a small apartment in Berlin.

I have been working with lots of different things in Stockholm, in hotels, within child care, in a book store and in a large record store. During several summers, I’ve been working with creative writing camps for children and teenagers. I have also visited schools to read from my books or to talk about my writing. For a couple of years, I have also been working for the RFSL, (The National Organization for Gay & Lesbian Rights) in leading discussion groups for young bi- or homosexual boys and girls. During those years, I also initiated the same kind of discussion groups for people older than 25 – men and women who, for one reason or another never dared to come out as bi- or homosexuals. These groups were an immediate success.

I have been writing stories since I was a child. The earliest stories that I still have, were written when I was seven or eight. Simple stories, very often about a little boy looking for friends. Well...

My literary debut came in 1993 with the novel Min bror och hans bror – My brother and his brother. It’s the story about an 18-year-old boy Jonas, who tries to create an image of the brother he never met, a brother who died the year before Jonas himself was born. Jonas soon learns that his brother, Paul, had an intense love affair with another boy during the last year of his life. The story – which is told like a crime story, with loose ends, clues and cliff hangers – have had very good reviews in Sweden,and it has been translated into Danish, Norwegian, Dutch, Hungarian, Icelandic, French, Greek, German, Italian, English, Spanish and Polish.


My second novel, Dröm att leva – Living a dream or, A dream to live – was published in 1996. It also deals with the themes sorrow and homosexuality. The main character is another teenager, Mikael. He has recently lost his father in an accident, and Mikael is trying to go through the first months of grief and sorrow while staying with friends in a country house in Skåne, in the south of Sweden. During his stay, he meets a Danish boy in the same age, with whom he falls in love. Dröm att leva has some connections to Min bror och hans bror, but it's not a sequel. My second novel has been translated into Danish, Icelandic and German. The title of the novel is inspired by a line from a poem by Gunnar Ekelöf: Ge mig gift att dö, eller drömmar att leva. (Give me poison to die, or dreams to live).

 My third novel, Om att samla frimärken – On collecting stamps, was published in spring 2003. It received very good reviews in Sweden. The novel has been translated into French, Italian, German and English. The novel is about Mattias, a man in his late thirties, and his childhood friend Samuel, a man who’s some forty years older than Mattias. When Mattias hears that Samuel has passed away, he returns to his childhood town for the funeral. During the visit he remembers a lot of things from his childhood and from the period when he befriended Samuel. Now, with the experiences of a grown up man, he starts to understand Samuel even more. He also realizes that there is a likeness between the two.

In the beginning of 2005 I finished an opera libretto entitled William. It’s a fantasy on the life of William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe. The opera, with music by the Swedish composer and conductor B Tommy Andersson, had its premiere in the summer of 2006, at the renaissance castle in Vadstena, Sweden. It was scheduled for eleven performances, all of them were sold out. There was also a live broadcast of the opera on the Swedish Radio.

My fourth novel, I ett annat land – In another country, was published in August 2006. It’s the story of a 14-year-old refugee boy, Aleks, who has fled a war-stricken country in Europe together with his parents and his sister. The novel, which describes Aleks’ first six months in the new country (Sweden), has been translated into Danish and Icelandic.

A bilingual collection of short stories – in French and Swedish – was published in November, 2010, under the title Nära vatten – Trois nouvelles au bord de l’eau [Three short stories by the waterside] by the French organization MEET in Saint-Nazaire. The French translations are made by Philippe Bouquet.

My fifth novel, Regn och åska, [Rain and Thunder] was published in March 2011. It’s a love story between two almost seventeen year old boys, Rein from Tallinn, Estonia, and Oscar from Visby, Sweden. The novel has been translated into German.

In June 2013 my sixth novel will be published in Swedish. I will post some more information about that later.

Apart from writing, I have also made some translations from Norwegian, Danish, Estonian, English and Polish. Mainly poetry, but also prose and children’s books. I have written several articles and short stories which have been published in literary magazines in Sweden, Finland, Iceland, France, Norway and the USA.I have also worked with courses in creative writing for teenagers. These courses have mainly been summer camps close to Stockholm, but also daytime workshops in the Stockholm public library. For several years I was also part of a reference group at the Swedish Writer’s Foundation, which deals with grant applications from writers, translators and illustrators.

Håkan Lindquist, August 1, 2009, updated in September, 2012.

The photo is taken by Davy Prieur.