The parks are littered with trash; the streets are covered with cigarette butts. The litterbins outside the school are on fire, and so is the rage inside Miira. Asphalt court yards, concrete buildings and faces hard as stone. The place is calle ...
The parks are littered with trash; the streets are covered with cigarette butts. The litterbins outside the school are on fire, and so is the rage inside Miira.
Asphalt court yards, concrete buildings and faces hard as stone. The place is called Gårdsten, a suburb outside Gothenburg, just like any other working-class suburb outside any other town. Bored teenagers, junkies and alcoholics share the semi-empty squares and staircases. The litterbins outside the school are on fire, and so is the rage inside Miira.
Miira is not like the others in the class; shoved together with these kids with similar backgrounds, pre-determined by the school as future cleaners and industrial workers. But Miira wants to become a prime minister or a brain surgeon when she grows up. She alone chooses advanced math in school and shoplifts medical books to study at home.
She is the kind of girl who never ducks for a fight, who won't giggle when guys grope her, who won't accept any injustices around her. But she is also heavily weighed down by the burden of her own class she wants to be better, to do better, but the society won't always let her. This is a No Child's Land, cemented by blunt bureaucracy and suppressed dreams.
Eija Hetekivi Olsson's eye-opening debut novel Ingenbarnsland / No Child's Land is set in the Gothenburg suburbs in the eighties, and we follow the girl Miira from her pre-adolescence to her becoming a young woman. Hetekivi Olsson writes expressively and with rarely seen intensity; like a welding flame the novel depicts Sweden after the Welfare State. The portray of Miira is one of the strongest in recent years fiction.
Press voices:
“A pulsating rage – that is the force behind the novel Ingenbarnsland and it drives the story on at a hell of a pace. It drags and tears at female protagonist Miira’s young body. What Hetekivi Olsson contributes to the existing literature about the Swedish housing programme of the 60s and 70s (known as Miljonprogrammet) is a version of the language that is her very own, along with an intense energy and dislocated world view that this language so loyal to the protagonist creates. Here Miira’s rage is such a wonderfully hopeful force, fighting its way through a tangle of groping older men, mocking teachers and a dreary vulnerability that would contrive to stop her sticking her nose outside the concrete ghetto and amazing the world.” Sveriges Radio Kulturnytt
“The novel is loaded with wonderful neologisms and unexpected twists and turns. But playing with language is not always and everywhere problem-free, as Miira finds out to her bitter experience. For example, after completing her work experience in eighth grade she has to write down what it was like and what she has learnt. She completes the assignment but her teacher takes exception to the way she has written it and the account is returned with the comment: ‘You tamper with the Swedish language and make up your own words. You must not do that. You have to follow the rules of grammar.’ I have a feeling that Eija Hetekivi Olsson has borrowed that particular episode, along with many others in the novel, from her own life. And I hope she continues to tamper with – and enrich – the Swedish language.” Svenska Dagbladet
“Her story is irrefutable in its description of growing up: never forget that childhood, beyond all the rock-a-bye baby, is about survival. This is a ferociously strong debut … seldom have I read such a translucent, acute and contemporary description of the extreme vulnerability of children who live an unprotected life … Ingenbarnsland is a modern day equivalent of novels depicting the bondage of tied rural workers and might very well stir up a debate about poverty today.” Dagens Nyheter
“Ingenbarnsland with its grim realism is a wonderful debut novel, filled with extreme linguistic fantasy and with an intelligently executed street view of Swedish class-based society of 25 years ago. I doubt it looks any different today. In an interview I read that Eija Hetekivi Olsson is burning with the desire to write more books. Good! I really want to read more of her work!”
Skånska Dagbladet
“In Ingenbarnsland Eija Hetekivi Olsson travels far in this direction and this is mainly what makes Ingenbarnsland a political novel. By having as her theme a position from which to describe the world – a position that is subordinate but also imprinted with the refusal to accept the world image promoted by those in power, and a keen will to rebel - Eija Hetekivi Olsson shines a spotlight on the power structures of society.”
LO-tidningen
“Eija Hetekivi Olsson has a voice all her own in which Gothenburg dialect and wit are combined with vulgarity and Finnish profanities, and with every sentence the reader is shaken by its brutal directness and energy. Reading Ingenbarnsland is like being flung round in a centrifuge. The world is not the same afterwards.” Norrköpings Tidningar
"Strong class portrayal for our time" Dala-Demokraten
"Ingenbarnsland is not yet another report in the form of a novel about a shitty childhood. It is something much bigger and more important. I want to shout hello Jan Bjorklund, Erik Ullenhag and Namko Sabuni, read this book!" Länstidningen
"This is more than a promising debut" QX
"The fuckyou-finger that she repeatedly directs against authority is so liberatingly cocky that it is impossible not to be swept along and cheer for her. / ... / While the reading of Miiras hardships makes me excited because she seems so upright and alive, Ingenbarnsland distresses me. The book may be taking place 25 years ago but there is no indication that anything really has changed. / ... / Ingenbarnsland is a very strong debut. And I really hope it went well for Miira." Upsala Nya Tidning
"Furthermore, the novel's subject is, without being a pamphlet, very political. Miiras entire existence is based on the fact that Sweden is a class society. And a reminder of that, disguised as a very clever and heartbreaking debut novel, is always in order." Smålandsposten
“Hetekivi Olsson has written up a furious girl in a world where girls' violence will lead to future success in the field of nonviolence. It is a violence that, combined with the living language, actually makes me happy." Dagens Nyheter
“I have trouble leaving the maturing increasingly seeing Miira, her struggle with her pride and explosive temper and the gradual "involvement "in a "perverse adult conscience". I simply hope for an equally emotionally charged continuation." Aftonbladet