Interview with Hanna Nordenhök about her novel Caesaria

Story Radio Podcast

In 19th-century Sweden, Caesaria is kept in a doctor's mansion as a trophy: she is the first baby to be born alive from one of his c-sections.

In a Gothic ambience, Caesaria narrates in first person her experiences in the mansion and her encounters with its mysterious inhabitants and visitors. Does she know where she comes from? Where is her mother? Is there a world beyond these walls?

We interview Hanna Nordenhök about her Gothic tale, published for the first time in English by Heloise Press on the 24th October 2024. Inspired by a real-life nineteenth-century medical miracle, it explores issues - women's bodies and women's rights - that are vitally contemporary.

Our wide-ranging discussion covers some international writers and film-makers whose work listeners might not be familiar with so we thought we would list them here.

Authors

Ágota Kristóf - 1935 – 2011: Hungarian author

The Notebook Trilogy and The Illiterate are available in translation

Birgitta Trotzig 1929 – 1935: Swedish author

Her work seems currently only available in Swedish or translated into French or Spanish.

Fernanda Melchor (b.1982) Mexican: Paradais and Hurricane Season published by Fitzcarraldo

Films

The Wild Child - Francois Truffaut 1970

The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser Hans Werber Herzog 1974

The Knick - Steven Soderbergh (TV series) 2014-15

Hanna Nordenhök (Malmo, 1977) has been awarded several major literary honors for her work, both as novelist, poet and essayist. Her novel Caesaria (2020) scooped Swedish Radio’s Literary Prize and was shortlisted for Vi’s Literature Prize. Nordenhök also works as a translator from the Spanish and has been praised for her translations of Fernanda Melchor, Andrea Abreu and Alia Trabucco Zerán. Her last novel Wonderland (2023) was listed among the Best Books of the Year in Dagens Nyheter, Svenska Dagbladet, Expressen, Borås Tidning, Hufvudstadsbladet and Magasinet ETC, as well as shortlisted for Vi's Literature Prize.

Saskia Vogel is a writer and translator of over two-dozen Swedish-language books. Her novel Permission was published in five languages. She is a recipient the Berlin Senate grant for non- German literature, the Bernard Shaw Prize, two English PEN Translates Awards, and was a PEN America Translation Prize finalist. She was Princeton’s Fall 2022 Translator in Residence. Born and raised in Los Angeles, she lives in Berlin.

This episode was produced by Martin Nathan.

Martin Nathan’s short fiction and poetry has appeared in a range of journals and his novel – A Place of Safety is published by Salt Publishing. His dramatic writing has been shortlisted for the Nick Darke award and the Woodward International Prize.

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