This year's fiction August Prize went to Marit Kaplas Osebol, it did not belong to the preliminary drafts, but is also not a real gossip: In recent years, many of the books nominated for the fiction award have taken place in rural and minority groups, far from big city and majority culture, as does Kapla's book.
Osebol is a small village in northern Värmland where the deal has been closed and the population has grown older, although some new people have moved in in recent years. Marit Kapla was born in Osebol herself, she went to school and lived in Torsby and got a taste for the big city, but she went home to the village a few years ago and literally put her ear to it.
She has interviewed almost all residents - some 40 in the age group between 18 and 93 - and has from a large amount of material raised pregnant lines that run as a long collective poem story over 800 pages, that is journalism turned into poetry.
Osebol is on one level a tribute to the countryside, to a way of life that means that everyone knows everyone, but also has a great freedom to design their lives close to nature and human community without sacrificing personal integrity and odd interests. Everyone also comes to speak, Kapla makes a selection, but she does not censor. Some argue that Muslims and Swedes do not fit together, while another believes that asylum accommodation will save the village, provide jobs and youth.
For those who live in the village , it is the center of the world, the periphery is far away, the village manages itself despite the lack of infrastructure. A wood stove, arable land and game in the forest goes a long way. The many voices form into a choral work with a repertoire that usually runs in the major. Life in the Swedish countryside may be invisible from the capital, but there is no bad life for it.