Sigrid Rausing – författare

Sigrid Rausing describes the changing world of the Estonian Swedes, and the way in which this minority identity was constructed in the various ideologies that have dominated the region since the early twentieth century. In particular she is concerned with the latest of these changes: the post-Soviet attempt to 'restore' Swedish cultural identity. Rausing touches on a wide range of issues, debates, and insights: the relationship between ideology and form, nationalist and Soviet notions of ethnicity and traditional culture and historically-framed notions of an imagined normality. The ethnographic location for these discussions is a particular former collective farm, now subject to economic decline, the Estonian nation-building ideological project, and new relationships of dependency with Sweden. One of the author's central arguments is that these changes reflect a conscious attempt to 'reform habitus' so as to match that of the local image of the West, but that the location of ethnic culture and many of the operative concepts still reflect the tropes of the Soviet era.

A searingly powerful memoir about the impact of addiction on a family In the summer of 2012 a woman named Eva was found dead in the London townhouse she shared with her husband, Hans K. Rausing. The couple had struggled with addiction for years, often under the glare of tabloid headlines. Now, writing with singular clarity and restraint, Hans's sister, the editor and publisher Sigrid Rausing, tries to make sense of what happened. Mayhem is an eloquent and timely attempt to understand the conundrum of addiction, and a memoir that is as poignant and riveting as it is devastating.

From 1993 to 1994, Sigrid Rausing completed her anthropological fieldwork on the penninsula of Noarootsi, a former Soviet border protection zone in Estonia. Abandoned watchtowers dotted the coastline, and the huge fields of the Lenin collective farm were laying fallow, waiting for claims from former owners who had fled war and Soviet and Nazi occupation. Rausing's research focused on the loss of historical memory during the Soviet occupation, and the slow revival of an independent Estonian culture, including the recognition of the minority Swedes in Estonia. She lived and worked amongst the villagers, witnessing their transition from repression to independence, and from Soviet neglect to post-Soviet austerity.

When the celebrated Swedish writer Johanna Ekström found out that she was dying from an eye melanoma she asked her closest friend, Sigrid Rausing, to finish her last book. Rausing transcribed and edited the thirteen handwritten notebooks left by Ekström. The result is a memoir of exceptional depth and intensity, published to critical acclaim in Sweden in 2023.The work showcases Ekström's vivid imagination, writerly precision, and psychological insight, interwoven with Rausing's spare and sober reflections. And the Walls Became the World All Around is a literary experiment, a testament to friendship, and a deep meditation on grief.

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