Why a Booktrail?
1949: A boy of 15 has an affair with a 51 year old woman
The Parable Book
What you need to know before your trail
Sweden, 1949. A boy of 15, cutting across a garden, chances upon a woman of 51. What ensues is cataclysmic, life-altering. All the more because it cannot be spoken of. Can it never be spoken of?
Looking back in late old age at an encounter that transformed him suddenly yet utterly, P.O. Enquist, a titan of Swedish letters, has decided to “come out” – but in ways entirely novel and unexpected. He has written the book that smoldered unwritten within him his entire life. The book he had always seen as the one he could not write.
Travel Guide
Grannholmen in the Swedish archipelago
Where the story starts :
“He wanted to visit Granholmen, with its fir trees many thousands of year old. The fir trees are enourmous “The island only seventy metres across”, the building his father had first put up as a summer house, ten metres from the Green House.
The village has changed Granholmen’s name to Majaholmen, This is where his mother had spent summers with him as a little boy. There was no other summer dwelling on the island, to the name was right enough.
Lake Bursjon – the place of Haken’s death and resurrection we are told in the book
Vasterbotten – Hjoggböle
In fact one of the village children he knew grew up to become the father of Stieg Larsson, who wrote the Millennium trilogy, so perhaps there is something in the water of Hjoggböle lake. This is also the village and lak ewhich feature heavily in the novel
Booktrail Boarding Pass: The Parable Book
Destination :Sweden, Stockholm archipelago, Hjoggböle Author/Guide: Per Olov Enquist Departure Time: 1949
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