Author: Linda Olsson
 
  
Linda Olsson's breathtaking debut novel Let me sing you gentle songs (2005)
captivated readers and critics alike, establishing her as a lyrical, intelligent writer with an amazing talent for plumbing the depths of human emotion. The book was sold to some twenty countries, becoming a bestseller in several of them. It was nominated for several prizes and is currently being adapted for film in Sweden.

The follow-up, Sonata for Miriam (2008) confirmed her reputation as a nuanced writer with a style that is both poetic and precise. With her unerring sense of detail, Olsson spins an elaborate web of love and sacrifice, grief and deceit, all set in motion by a single chance encounter. Linda's latest novel, The Kindness of Your Nature (also published under the title The Memory of Love) was published simultaneously in English and Swedish versions and immediately hit the top lists both in Sweden and New Zealand.

Linda Olsson is now writing on her fourth novel, again with English and Swedish-language versions to appear in parallel. It is planned to initially publish in 2014.

Linda Olsson was born in 1948 and grew up in Stockholm. She trained as a lawyer and worked in banking for many years before leaving Sweden with her family in 1986. She has lived in Kenya, Singapore, England and Japan, and since 1990 she has been living in Auckland, New Zealand. 'Let Me Sing You Gentle Songs' made Linda Olsson one of the most well-known new authors from New Zealand worldwide.

 
Bibliography
2005 Let me sing you gentle songs/ Astrid & Veronika
2008 Sonata for Miriam
2011 The Kindness of Your Nature/Memory of Love
Linda Olsson’s first novel casts the themes of secrecy, passion and loss in the shape of a double helix, intertwining the stories of two women, one young and one nearing the end of life, around the axis of their unlikely friendship./---/ the braiding together of the two women’s voices is simply so beguiling...
- New York Times
Her language is balanced and nuanced, the form restrained, her novel both soberly clear-sighted and grasping in its direct approach.
- Svenska Dagbladet
…Linda Olsson’s debut takes the plunge into the absolutely emotional in order to tell its story. This inspires respect. When I put the book down I have received a finely tuned tale of delivered loneliness, and two women’s path back to joy and belief in life through opening up to each other and naming their pain.
- Aftonbladet