During her writing career, Klas Östergren has been invited to write Christmas stories for both newspapers and radio, and now seven of these are being collected in a new book.
The short stories include Red Christmas and White trash Christmas, which were written for Dagens nyheter and have a class theme.
The title story is a story that has been with the author for a long time, but which took shape during the pandemic when he had a lot of time to be at home and write.
- I personally think it's a rather strange story, says Klas Östergren in SVT's literature program Babel.
Small town and Christmas revue in focus
The novel's main character has been invited to the fictional town of Jonseryd to help the local amateur theater company set up this year's Christmas revue - an old tradition that has lost its spark since one of the big stars left.
- It's about a narrator who is astonishingly like myself who is invited to a small municipality somewhere in Sweden: a fairly typical municipality with Domustorg, a boring pizzeria, an old theater and a mosque in an old bowling alley - yes, everything that should is in a smaller Swedish city, says Klas Östergren.
In the video you can hear his thoughts on depicting Christmas, and Christmas revues in particular. The entire interview can be seen in Babel which is broadcast on SVT 2 on Sunday 28 December.