The Latest at Goethe

This year, the Frankfurt Book Fair is focused on its Guest of Honour, New Zealand. But, the representative of New Zealand’s literature travelling to Frankfurt happens to be Swedish. In the interview, author Linda Olsson talks about how she ended up at the other end of the world.

Ms Olsson, your surname suggests that you are not a typical New Zealand writer. How did you get to New Zealand?

Olsson: I was pregnant with my third child when my husband was offered a job from the World Bank in Kenya, and I was looking forward to spending lots of time with the baby. What was actually planned as a three-year interruption of our lives in Sweden became the beginning of a journey that took us around the whole world and finally ended in Wellington in 1990. I had never been in New Zealand before. When I got off the plane, the first thing I did was to search the ground for kiwis...

Two of your books, Let Me Sing You Gentle Songs and The Kindness of Your Nature, begin with the arrival of the protagonists in New Zealand. In the latter, contact with the landscape of New Zealand becomes a kind of catalyst for her personal liberation. Did something similar happen to you?

Like my protagonist, I also find the landscape of New Zealand overwhelming. It is incredibly diverse. Although the country is so small, everything seems very large. The sea is enormous, the mountains are huge; next to them you feel very tiny. There’s something liberating about it. I associate Europe with the comfort of human closeness. Everything is full of people and noises. In New Zealand, the sounds come from nature.

Linda Olsson reading from “The Kindness of Your Nature"

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Yet isn’t the Swedish landscape very similar to that of New Zealand?

That’s true; there are great similarities. And we are united in our great love of nature. I think it’s no coincidence that Sweden and New Zealand often make the same decisions in international issues. We are two tiny countries at the edges of the world.

What began as the experience of nature led to a successful career as a writer in New Zealand. How did that happen?

In 2003, a few years before the publication of my first book, I won the Sunday Star-Times Short Story Award, an important award in New Zealand, for which many good resident writers applied. Another author who is not a native speaker also won in another category. This also reveals the hospitality of this country. Although I wrote a very Swedish book in a language that is not my own, I was welcomed with open arms and accepted as a writer of New Zealand.

It’s like a fairy tale: for an attorney to be successful in such an intimate field as literature, and in a foreign country...

Looking back, it is truly extraordinary, but at the time it all happened so incidentally. I had registered for a course at the university in Auckland where all of the other students were half my age – with Witi Ihimaera.

The writer of the book The Whale Rider that was turned into a film.

Yes, an incredibly productive and creative person. Under his supervision, I wrote my first novel and submitted it quite without thinking to one of the large New Zealand publishers. A little later I received a phone call that they wished to publish my book. And that’s how the ball got rolling. Now the book is available in 31 countries.

Let Me Sing You Gentle Songs – what kind of book is it?

I like to describe it as a little literary chamber play. There are only two characters who approach one another hesitantly and finally enter into a close friendship. I don’t know exactly what it is, but the book seems to have something that speaks directly to people. I often hear about ill people who drew strength from the story. One woman even claimed it helped her survive cancer.

Linda Olsson reading from “Let Me Sing You Gentle Songs"

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Football and literature have something in common: playing the second season – or writing the second book – is very difficult. How was it for you?

It was not difficult to write it, but it was tough to see that it was not able to even get close to the success of the first book. Perhaps it’s because I chose a male narrator.

What’s wrong with that?

Perhaps I am considered a representative of traditional women’s literature. I do not at all like the idea that books are written only for certain groups. One of my publishers even showed me an info-graphic containing a statistical survey of my readers. What’s that mean? Anyone can read a book. I read many typically male authors and don’t understand why men shouldn’t be interested in women’s subject matter and vice versa.

Friendship is a repeated theme of your books.

That’s right. In The Kindness of Your Nature, the protagonist encounters a little boy who is being abused at home. This confronts her with her own terrible childhood and she intervenes to save the boy. At the same time, she herself is healed. Basically, it’s about two dysfunctional people who become friends and thereby save each other.

Let Me Sing You Gentle Songs still seems very Swedish, The Kindness of Your Nature is your latest book. Is it very New Zealand?

Yes, I am in a state in which I am entirely immersed in New Zealand. I no longer battle with homesickness here. This makes me far more liberated in writing than I once was. My new book has lots of love for New Zealand in it.

How would you assess the situation of literature in New Zealand?

The Kindness of Your Nature is set in the small town of Kawhia, which is situated in a remote area on the west coast of the north island. Although the population of Kawhia is only about 600 people, it has a library. Every town here, no matter how small, has a library. That says a great deal about a country and its people and for the size of this country, there is an unusually large number of talented writers. They are good readers, but also good writers.

Christoph Mücher asked the questions.