PENGUIN MODERN CLASSICS · A Swedish feminist cult classic, translated into English for the first time · Translated by Kathy Saranpa
Martina and Gustav are students in 1970s Stockholm. They meet and fall straight into coupledom. But what is coupledom, exactly? A route to marriage? A habit that any intelligent person ought to consider breaking?
Martina and Gustav talk about their relationship endlessly — with each other and with everyone else — as they try to make it work. Unwilling to marry, Martina ends up in a permanent state of engagement while her friends settle into marriages and children. And as she throws herself into the political upheaval of the time, with its demos, sit-ins and philosophy seminars, she starts to wonder whether joy comes from being loved, or from living entirely on her own terms.
First published in Sweden in 1976 as Maken, where it was hailed as an instant classic, this is a funny, sharp and heartbreaking novel about love, independence and people who can't love each other the way they want to be loved. The Guardian calls it her cult anti-marriage novel, a dark comedy; the Financial Times finds it effortlessly contemporary.
About the author and translator
Gun-Britt Sundström (b. 1945, Stockholm) is an author, critic and translator, and the author of sixteen books. Since the 1990s she has been one of Sweden's foremost literary translators, including of Jane Austen and Charlotte Brontë, and she received the Helga Prize in 2019.
Kathy Saranpa translates from Swedish and Finnish into English. Bringing Maken into English fulfilled a lifelong ambition.
Edition details
- Penguin Modern Classics paperback, 560 pages
- Originally published in Swedish in 1976
