Author tips on comforting literature in coronation times

Daniel Sjölin is a writer and literary critic. He believes that reading is an excellent activity to engage in quarantine, as it is an isolated and asocial activity. And if you suffer from corona anxiety, it can be cured with feel-good literature.

- When you are depressed you want to eat foods that do not taste anything, you can use the literature as well. Feelgood makes us think of something completely different, he says.

Danish author Hanne-Vibeke Holst has previously written on the pandemic theme in Som Pesten from 2018. Right now she is working on her next novel - in a quarantine-like state.

- Quarantine is a luxury. Right now I am in my summer cottage and writing. I call it a "novel prison," says Hanne-Vibeke Holst.

According to her, the language can give comfort in difficult times.

- The language has words for everything. Why? Well, because people have been on this before, she says.

Albert Camus The plague of 1947 takes place during a severe epidemic in Oran, Algeria. The plague changes people's behavior; some flee or exploit the situation while others help their fellow human beings. It was a book that Hanne-Vibeke Holst was inspired by when she wrote Like the Plague.

- The most amazing book about all this is Camus The Plague. Every single individual, every person has to decide how to act in that situation. Even when you are threatened yourself, you have to think about what kind of person you are and what kind of person you want to say you were, says Hanne-Vibeke Holst.

However, she thinks that books and movies should be avoided without hope.

- It is great to watch old Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts films. Dancing, crying, loving, having sex, drinking hot chocolate with cream. Anything!

Daniel Sjölin thinks that you should take the opportunity to grapple with some classics - if you quarantine now.

- Boccaccios Decamerone, which consists of 100 texts, is about some who flee the plague. They need something to do and sit and tell stories to each other. It shows that people have moved away from the infection to some mountain top or remote village, he says and continues:

- If you want to torment yourself, you can take Leif Holmstrands Förkylningen, an experimental book that contains obsessions and links to a writer named Unica Zürn. She had so much obsession that she couldn't walk outside the door.