NEGAR NASEH

Negar Naseh_foto Adam Nilsson_WEBB_

Negar Naseh made her debut as a writer the same year she graduated from medical school. Under all denna vinter is partly a novel about a complex mother-daughter relationship, using the forests of Västerbotten as backdrop, and is partly a journal of the writing process inviting the reader to a conversation about reading and writing. The debut was praised by critics and nominated to Borås Tidnings debut prize in 2014.

Negar Naseh has described her own writing as more of a reading process. In an interview with the newspaper Sydsvenskan, she compares her working process to an academic search for knowledge: ”I want to dig myself into a hole and in that hole I want to fill the walls with things that will help me climb out. That’s when writing fiction becomes interesting to me, when I can create a world based on other stories”.

Her second novel, De Fördrivna, was released last March and is a psychological drama about Europe today. A Swedish couple living in Sicily struggle with their everyday problems, while the refugee crisis unfolds in the background. The cold of the north has been replaced by the burning heat of the south, and with tight, restrained language Negar Naseh explores the indifference of the middle class. She calls it ”White Melancholy,”, the feeling white people get when the injustices of the world come too close.