The book contains stories of many different kinds. Some of them have autobiographic elements, others are totally fictional. One piece is a fairy tale, another begins as a normal story and ends as a farce. A few of the stories have elements of magic realism. One story is about friendship between two university students in the 19th century, another about a nursemaid in Ireland in the 1950s who gets into “difficulties” and is brutally taken care of by nuns. The story that has given name to the collection, begins realistically, changes into magic realism and is from there written in a technique that I would call “double exposure” and then changes again into a dialogue as if from an Elizabethan play. The last story is an attempt to look into the life of young people, a group of Oxford students living together.

Uddrag af bogen

“I´ve spent my holidays learning tango! And now, when I tell my colleagues about it, the first thing they ask is ´Isn´t it a rather dirty dance´?”

“And what do you tell them?”

“Well, of course I can see what kind of answer they want, so I invented a little joke to indulge them. ´Do you know what´s the similarity between tango and sex? No? Well, the average duration of a tango is three minutes´.

And then ´Do you know what the difference is´? – With tango you can go on with different partners for the whole night´. But then I read a novel by Erica Jong, and I had to put that into the first category too.”

Om forfatteren

Jan-Inge Wijk was born in Malmö, Sweden. Studied Latin and French at the University of Lund and guitar at The Royal Musical Academy, Copenhagen. Associate Professor emeritus from The Funen Conservatory of Music. Composer. Capricorn. Vegetarian.

Someone at the other end - häftad, Engelska, 2024