A village at the end of the world, a young man who stays while everyone else leaves: In his debut, Mattias Timander creates a haunting portrait of life in a remote northern Swedish village. The barren landscape is both fascinating and threatening, the people are closely interwoven and yet full of unfathomable cracks - a world in which silent secrets lurk and the truth is only dimly revealed.
Only when the protagonist begins to read does a new, fascinating reality open up to him. Literature becomes a current that sweeps his thoughts along and finally carries him to the big city. There he meets a manic writer and immerses himself in the pulsating life of the bohemians. But the answers he is looking for remain vague - until an unforeseen event sets a new course and forces him to act.
Dein Wille wohnt in den Wäldern is a quiet, fearless examination of identity, belonging and language as a border and bridge. The novel is also a fictional treatment of the story of Timander's deceased grandparents and their Tornedalian heritage.

In the original, the work is a fascinating weave of northern Swedish and Tornedalian dialect as well as the minority language Meänkieli, which vividly reflects the complexity of origin and identity. Hanna Granz has translated this linguistic diversity into German with great sensitivity and linguistic finesse - and she has particularly succeeded in rendering the haunting silence that plays a central role in the novel.

Mattias Timander was born in Kiruna, Sweden's northernmost city, in 1998 and belongs to the Tornedal ethnic minority. He now lives in Stockholm, where he works as a cultural journalist and freelance author. He studied literature in Stockholm and was the youngest mayor in Swedish history between 2018 and 2020 at the age of 20. He then worked for the Bonnier publishing group until 2022, where he moderated author talks.

Hanna Granz was born in 1977 in East Frisia, grew up and went to school in the Ruhr region. After studying Scandinavian studies in Bonn and Greifswald, she worked for several years as an employee of the Literaturhaus Leipzig. Since 2012, she has been working as a freelance translator, mainly from Swedish. In this context, she has taken part in various seminars and training courses, including the Berlin Translators' Workshop 2017 and the ViceVersa German-Swedish Workshop 2022 in Straelen. She has lived with her family in Wanfried an der Werra since April 2019.

In cooperation with the Department of Scandinavian Languages at the University of Bonn and the Bonn City Library

Supported by Svenska institutet and the Weltlesebühne e.V.