European Trash (Fourteen Ways to Remember a Father)

Winner of the 2010 Gerard Bonnier Prize.

"One of the year''s most stimulating reading experiences."—Michel Ekman, Svenska Dagbladet

"Ulf Peter Hallberg writes beautifully about both love and trash."—Amelie Björck, Göteborgs-Posten

Combining fact and fiction, photographs and quotes, European Trash is a humorous, moving, and elegiac novel that "circles" around the image of the author''s father who, through his assemblage of objects, art, and wisdom—collected in his flat in Malmö, Sweden—strives to keep the culture and values that others might call "European Trash" intact.

I open the door and walk into my father''s empty apartment. Already in the hall I get the feeling that he is still in the kitchen making coffee, quickly turning around to look in my direction. In that unfamiliar silence, visions and memories are released: how he walked toward me with that gleam in his eye, how he pronounced my name, how he inspected me to check my level of fatigue.

Ulf Peter Hallberg is a Swedish writer born in Malmö, Sweden, who has lived in Berlin, Germany, since 1983. He is the author of many books, including The Glance of the Flâneur (translated into German and Italian), Grand Tour, Legends & Lies, and European Trash.

Erland Anderson has published several books in translation, including Between Darkness, Darkness: Selected Poems by Rolf Aggestam (with Lars Nordstrom, 1989), and Views from a Tuft of Grass by Harry Martinson (2005).

Ingrid Cassady is from Stockholm, Sweden, and currently lives in California.