Purity

Andrzej Tichý was born in Prague to a Polish mother and a Czech father and has lived in Sweden since 1981. In Sweden, Wretchedness was a finalist for the August Prize and won the Eyvind Johnson Prize, while Purity was a finalist for the 2021 Nordic Council Literature Prize. A translator Swedish and Norwegian literature, Nichola Smalley is also publicist at And Other Stories. In 2015 she finished a PhD exploring the use of contemporary urban vernaculars in Swedish and UK rap and literature at UCL. Her translations range from a Swedish book about Brazilian football (Jogo Bonito by Henrik Brandão Jönsson (Yellow Jersey Press)), to the latest novel by Norwegian superstar Jostein Gaarder, An Unreliable Man (Weidenfeld & Nicolson).

‘Purity is a strong, challenging book, emotionally charged, intricate and ceaselessly fascinating, poetic and tender, even humorous in its dark way, through all its roughness, deep grief, blood and grime.’ Aftonbladet