Nocturnal Strolls

Lina Wolff

Original title: Promenader i natten
Publisher: Albert Bonniers Förlag, 2024
Genre: Literary essay
Pages: 144 pages

“You have to become completely alone. To become completely alone you must risk burning your boats. This includes every hope of ever belonging, which is something you know deep inside that you have never done. Writers should never belong to anything. The Nocturnal Strolls will leave you alone with the God: the God of Writing.”

In forty-one passages Lina Wolff portrays the darker side of craftsmanship, the subconscious nocturnal life that lies behind every type of artistry. The texts are surreal, hilarious, ironic and self-ironic, but more than anything they add unique and unfiltered insight into the creative melting pot that we call literature.

Lina Wolff

Lina Wolff was born in Lund, Sweden, and lived for several years in Spain and Italy, where she worked as a translator. She arrived on the literary stage in 2009 with the publication of Many People Die Like You, a collection of short stories set in Spain and the south of Sweden. In 2012, her debut novel, Bret Easton Ellis and the Other Dogs, won the Vi Magazine Literature Prize. In 2016, her second novel, The Polyglot Lovers, won Sweden’s most esteemed literary award, the August Prize for Fiction, and has been translated into seventeen languages. Carnalitywas awarded the prestigious Aftonbladet Literature Prize in 2019.