Sven Karlsson is een Zweedse acteur en auteur wiens literaire carrière begon met een verzameling korte verhalen in 2007. Zijn schrijven wordt vaak gekenmerkt door een diepgang en introspectie die lijken voort te komen uit zijn ervaringen, zowel op als buiten het podium. Karlsson verkent de complexiteit van menselijke relaties en het innerlijke leven van zijn personages met een scherp oog voor detail en psychologische nauwkeurigheid. Zijn werken bieden lezers een indringend inzicht in het dagelijks leven en de universele thema's van de menselijke conditie.
In this trilogy of novellas, Jonas Karlsson explores the quirkier side of human nature, helping us to see the world anew via three eccentric narrators. Firstly, jobsworth Bjorn starts a new career and expects to progress quickly with his meticulousness and efficiency.
"It's an unremarkable life, I guess, nothing special. I'm in my thirties, I work part-time in a video store in Stockholm, most of my friends are busy with their families, I live alone. I suppose you'd say I have an ordinary lifea But I love this city, and even though my flat is small it suits me, I'm comfortable here. In the summer, the sun shines in through my windows at just the right angle and I can hear all the sounds of summer life down in the street. And there's a really good ice-cream stall just near my building, which sells my favourite flavours. So, ordinary maybe, but happy. Yes, I think it's fair to say I'm a happy man. And isn't that enough? A love story and a charming, surreal and funny tale about happiness, The Invoice will change the way you see your life."
The Authority looks favourably upon meticulousness, efficiency and ambition. Bjorn has all of this in spades, but it's only in the Room that he can really shine. The Room is a short, sharp and fiendish fable in the tradition of Franz Kafka, Samuel Beckett and Charlie Kauffman.
"The narrator of The Circus is perfectly content with his quiet life. He works at a bakery counter, and in his free time organizes (and reorganizes) his record collection. He's not up to much the day his old school friend Magnus invites him to a circus, and he's certainly not expecting the simple outing to change everything in his life. But while participating in a magic trick Magnus vanishes--completely. Struggling to piece together the events that led to his friend's inexplicable disappearance, the narrator comes to realize that even the most basic facts about his life are suddenly uncertain. His friend Jallo claims to have never met Magnus, even though they went to school together. Magnus's apartment seems deserted, but is the narrator at the right address? And who is the mysterious person who keeps calling him on the phone but never says a word? Sharply unsettling, wildly clever, and its secrets exquisitely kept--The Circus is a funhouse mirror of a read, a mastery of double-meaning as well as a moving excavation of friendship, identity, and the stories we tell about ourselves"--
In Jonas Karlssons Erzählungen wird der Alltag auf den Kopf gestellt, als vertraute Logik versagt. Eine Gruppe von Großstädtern wird mit unerwarteten Ereignissen konfrontiert, die ihre Leben miteinander verknüpfen. Die Geschichten zeigen, wie fragil unsere Selbstverständlichkeiten sind und laden den Leser ein, die tiefere Wahrheit hinter den Zufällen zu entdecken.