Thursday, October 20, 2011

Tranströmer's Prison now available

Tomas Tranströmer's Prison is the second of three books we're publishing this year by the 2011 Nobel Laureate.

Tomas Tranströmer worked for several years as a psychologist for juvenile delinquents. In 1959 he visited his colleague Åke Nordin, who was also a poet, at the Hällby youth prison in the southern part of Sweden. Later that year he sent Nordin a sequence of nine haiku, giving his impressions of the prison milieu. These poems were rediscovered in 2001 and are presented here in a bilingual edition.

This book was first published as a limited-edition letterpress chapbook in Sweden by Edda Edition in 2001. In this new bilingual edition, we are proud to bring you the original text plus an additional essay by Jonas Ellerström that traces the roots of the poems as well as the relationship between Åke Nordin and Tomas Tranströmer. This unique and wonderful collection, translated by Malena Mörling, will add a new glimpse into the life and work of one of the world's most celebrated poets.