All prizes Sweden
Augustpriset
Sweden · Since 1989 · For books in Swedish
Awarded each November by the Swedish Publishers' Association (Svenska Förläggareföreningen); this is its fiction category, Årets svenska skönlitterära bok, open to fiction of any form (novels, stories, poetry) first published in Swedish during the year.
The Swedish Publishers' Association founded the prize in 1989 on the initiative of the publisher Per I. Gedin and named it after August Strindberg. For its first three years a single prize went to the book of the year; since 1992 it has been awarded in three categories: fiction, non-fiction, and children's and young people's books. Any Swedish publisher may submit books written in Swedish and published during the past year. A five-member jury in each category nominates six titles in October, and the winner is chosen by secret ballot among 21 electors drawn from booksellers, librarians and critics. The winners are announced at the August Gala in Stockholm in late November and receive 100,000 kronor and a bronze statuette. Novels, story collections and poetry all compete in the fiction category.
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Augustpriset 2024 · Shortlist
Hyper
Agri Ismaïl · 43 when first published
Novel · 464 pages · Family, Migration
AI-generated summary:Rafiq, a Kurd, escapes Tehran by night with his wife and their three children and tries to start again in London, but cannot get past everything he has left behind.
Augustpriset 2023 · Shortlist
Systrarna
Jonas Hassen Khemiri · 45 when first published
Novel · 656 pages · Family, Migration
AI-generated summary:Three mysterious sisters, Swedish-born but talking English among themselves, move into Jonas's neighbourhood, and he slowly discovers that their family and his father's history are intertwined.
Augustpriset 2022 · Shortlist
Björnjägarens döttrar
Anneli Jordahl · 62 when first published
Novel · 400 pages · Family, Nature
AI-generated summary:A local historian sets out to write down the scandalous tale of the Leskinen sisters, seven daughters of a bear hunter who live wild and alone deep in the Finnish forest.
Augustpriset 2022 · Shortlist
Ixelles
Johannes Anyuru · 43 when first published
Novel · 468 pages
AI-generated summary:Since Mio died, Rut has brought up their son alone while working for a secretive agency that steers public opinion with invented voices. Then a boy in a coma is found with a recording of Mio speaking.
Augustpriset 2022 · Shortlist
Djävulsgreppet
Lina Wolff · 49 when first published
Novel · 288 pages · Love
AI-generated summary:A woman from a harsh northern place arrives in Florence, dazzled and unsettled, hoping her new lover will melt the frost inside her. Instead their relationship becomes a hold that keeps tightening.
Augustpriset 2021 · Shortlist
Singulariteten
Balsam Karam · 38 when first published
Novel · 194 pages
AI-generated summary:On a coastal road by the sea, a mother hunts for her missing daughter until grief drives her out of her mind. A pregnant tourist sees someone go over the edge of the cliffs.
Augustpriset 2019 · Shortlist
W.
Steve Sem-Sandberg · 61 when first published
Novel · 352 pages · Historical, War, Crime
AI-generated summary:To escape destitution, a solitary young man joins the army and is swept through the wars of early-nineteenth-century Europe, in a novel built on the real case behind Woyzeck.
Augustpriset 2018 · Shortlist
Jag for ner till bror
Karin Smirnoff · 54 when first published
Novel · 318 pages · Family, Crime
AI-generated summary:Jana Kippo, who as a girl once went for her father with a hayfork, comes back to Smalånger, a remote village in northern Sweden, to her twin brother, and takes a job caring for the elderly.
Augustpriset 2016 · Shortlist
Eländet
Andrzej Tichý · 38 when first published
Novel · 176 pages
AI-generated summary:Waiting for his fellow musicians at Slussen in Malmö, a cellist runs into a young man living rough, and a flood of voices, recollections and half-lost languages starts to take over his mind.
Augustpriset 2016 · Shortlist
Välkommen till Amerika
Linda Boström Knausgård · 44 when first published
Novel · 91 pages · Family, Coming of age
AI-generated summary:A girl fell silent long ago. Her mother, a stage actress, and her brother, who has nailed his door shut, have adapted, and now and then her dead father is waiting on her bed. She believes she caused his death.
Augustpriset 2016 · Shortlist
Aftonland
Therese Bohman · 38 when first published
Novel · 208 pages · Love
AI-generated summary:Karolina, a professor at Stockholm University living alone after a long relationship, takes on a confident new PhD student who claims that a forgotten woman artist will rewrite Swedish art history.
Augustpriset 2015 · Shortlist
Spådomen
Agneta Pleijel · 75 when first published
Novel · 272 pages · Autofiction, Coming of age, Family
AI-generated summary:Born in 1940, a girl grows up between Stockholm's suburbs, the United States and Lund, watching for a prophecy once made to her beloved aunt to come true, while her parents' marriage turns into a war zone.
Augustpriset 2015 · Shortlist
Rörelsen
John Ajvide Lindqvist · 47 when first published
Novel · 288 pages · Speculative · Platserna, book 2
AI-generated summary:Autumn 1985: John Lindqvist, who hopes to earn his living doing magic tricks in restaurants, rents a gloomy flat on Luntmakargatan in Stockholm. Soon something behind a locked door in the basement laundry begins to change the building.
Augustpriset 2014 · Shortlist
Ma
Ida Börjel · 39 when first published
Poetry · 336 pages
AI-generated summary:Poems that try to give form to the dead while they are gone, named after a Japanese character that can mean void, pause or room, a god, time, memory, and also a mother.
Augustpriset 2014 · Shortlist
Beckomberga
Sara Stridsberg · 42 when first published
Novel · 286 pages · Family
AI-generated summary:When Jimmie Darling is admitted to Beckomberga psychiatric hospital in Stockholm, his twelve-year-old daughter Jackie starts going there every day, and once her mother leaves on a long trip, the wards are all she has.
Augustpriset 2014 · Shortlist
De utvalda
Steve Sem-Sandberg · 56 when first published
Novel · 576 pages · Historical, War
AI-generated summary:Between 1940 and 1945 the Spiegelgrund clinic in Vienna takes in children the Nazi authorities brand as surplus: orphans, misfits, the 'racially degenerate'. A young inmate, Adrian Ziegler, and a nurse, Anna Katschenka, stand at the centre.
Augustpriset 2013 · Shortlist
Vitsvit
Athena Farrokhzad · 30 when first published
Poetry · 70 pages · Migration, Family, Politics
AI-generated summary:In one long poem, members of a family bound together by revolution and exile speak in turn about violence and whiteness; the speaker is heard only through the words she places in their mouths.
Augustpriset 2013 · Shortlist
Hägring 38
Kjell Westö · 52 when first published
Novel · 341 pages · Historical, Politics
AI-generated summary:Helsinki, 1938: the divorced lawyer Claes Thune takes on a capable, guarded clerk, Matilda Wiik. Then one evening, among his old friends of the Wednesday Club, she recognises a man from her past.
Also: Finlandia 2013 shortlist
Augustpriset 2013 · Shortlist
Liknelseboken
Per Olov Enquist · 79 when first published
Novel · 253 pages · Autofiction, Love, Family
AI-generated summary:An old writer wonders whether the eulogy he gave for his mother needs revising, as his father's notebook, its torn-out pages long thought burned, resurfaces and the memory of a first love asks to be told.
Augustpriset 2012 · Shortlist
En storm kom från paradiset
Johannes Anyuru · 33 when first published
Novel · 252 pages · Migration, Politics
AI-generated summary:A young Ugandan dreams of flying for his country's air force and is sent to train as a pilot in Greece. Then, in January 1971, Idi Amin seizes power and the cadets are ordered home.
Augustpriset 2012 · Shortlist
Sång till den storm som ska komma
Peter Fröberg Idling · 40 when first published
Novel · 331 pages · Historical, Politics, Love
AI-generated summary:Late summer 1955: Cambodia prepares for its first free election since independence. Young Sar, later known as Pol Pot, works secretly for a communist uprising while officially serving the leader of the opposition.
Augustpriset 2006 · Shortlist
Montecore
Jonas Hassen Khemiri · 28 when first published
Novel · 320 pages · Family, Migration
AI-generated summary:The writer Jonas receives an email from Kadir, a childhood friend of his father's, who urges him in a strange home-made French-Arabic Swedish to write a book about his father, the famous photographer.
Augustpriset 2006 · Shortlist
Drömfakulteten
Sara Stridsberg · 34 when first published
Novel · 338 pages · Politics
AI-generated summary:In April 1988 Valerie Solanas lies dying of pneumonia on a filthy mattress in a hotel room in San Francisco's Tenderloin, and the narrator imagines herself beside her, writing her life.
Augustpriset 2004 · Shortlist
Boken om Blanche och Marie
Per Olov Enquist · 70 when first published
Novel · 218 pages · Historical, Love
AI-generated summary:Blanche Wittman, once the most famous patient of the Paris neurologist Charcot, later becomes assistant to Marie Curie, and, maimed by radium, writes down her love for Charcot and Marie's affair with Langevin.
Augustpriset 2004 · Shortlist
Den stora gåtan
Tomas Tranströmer · 73 when first published
Poetry · 262 pages · Nature
AI-generated summary:Five poems and forty-five haiku in eleven sequences, short concentrated pieces about death, the riddles of life and the wonder of nature and human beings.
Augustpriset 2003 · Shortlist
Imago
Eva-Marie Liffner · 46 when first published
Novel · 256 pages · Crime, Historical
AI-generated summary:In 1938 a nineteenth-century soldier is found preserved in a bog on the Danish-German border; in 2000 a cleaner and amateur historian in Copenhagen stumbles on the documents about the find.
Augustpriset 2002 · Shortlist
Forsla fett
Aase Berg · 35 when first published
Poetry · 130 pages
AI-generated summary:Poems built from a shifting set of words, hare, whale, milk, shell, explore the tension between fullness and starvation, pregnancy and gravity, birth and being carried.
Augustpriset 2002 · Shortlist
Till Mervas
Elisabeth Rynell · 48 when first published
Novel · 192 pages · Love
AI-generated summary:Marta, a middle-aged woman who has long lived alone and cut off, receives a letter from Kostis, the love of her youth, sent from Mervas, a place in the far north she has never heard of.
Augustpriset 2001 · Shortlist
Lewis resa
Per Olov Enquist · 67 when first published
Novel · 468 pages · Historical, Politics
AI-generated summary:The life of Lewi Pethrus, founder of the Swedish Pentecostal movement, from working-class boy with dreams of becoming a writer to a spiritual leader conscious of his power.