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Mikael Niemi was born in 1959 and grew up in Pajala in the northernmost part of Sweden, near the Finnish border. He began to write poetry and short stories when he was fifteen years old. Among his published books are two collections of poetry—Näsblod under högmässan ("Nosebleed during Morning Service") (1998) and Änglar med mausergevär ("Angels with Mausers") (1989)—and a young adult novel, Kyrkdjävulen. "When a Beatles record falls into the hands of 11-year-old Matti, neither he nor his home village of Pajala, Sweden, will ever be the same. It is the early 1960s, and both Matti and Pajala are about to enter adolescence. This is a beautiful, poignant, often very funny novel about growing up in a remote area. Niemi writes with real poetry as he strings together the culturally rich vignettes of Matti's experiences, snapshots of childhood that are at the same time intensely personal and universal: the burn of the first alcoholic drink, the thrill of a first kiss, the awe of first sex, the special closeness of a first best friend, the pain of the first real loss-all rendered pure and convincingly as a young boy's perceptions. Niemi also seasons the book well with the mysticism of childhood that suffuses the usually hidden psychological space where the transformation from child to youth occurs. An exquisitely beautiful novel, artfully translated." "An isolated town in the north of Sweden where in summer light floods the landscape and in winter ice-floes crash along the river; the advent of Tarmac roads and the Beatles; a young boy who peers over the rim of the small world his parents stoically inhabit, and who longs to play the guitar and sing spine-tingling rock anthems. All the ingredients are there for a tender and bittersweet coming-of-age story: Roddy Doyle meets Fever Pitch. But then Mikael Niemi smashes into the memories he has assembled with his pulverizing imagination, splintering them into gargoyles and priapic sculptures. The familiar springs out at us transformed - grotesque, scary, hilarious, ribald, obscene. The chronology of childhood is reinvented as a space for dark, sexually obsessed fairy tales, discombobulating magic realism, giddy surreal vignettes, bawdy ribaldry. I've never read anything like it." |
