Falling Free (Fritt förfall)

Birgitta Stenberg

 

“‘Martha, I love you.’ She tried the words out and found them both irritating and fascinating, a little like stealing apples, sweet apples, apples without any tartness to them. ‘I should make a note of that - maybe I could use it in a poem.’"

Birgitta Stenberg wrote this (her first) novel in 1952. It deals with some lost artistic souls aimlessly wandering among the cafés and bars of Europe’s jet set cities. The main character Caroll does all she can to be able to live and work together with the other starving artists, if only for a few more days. She does whatever it takes so that she doesn’t have to go back home to her mother in Sweden. She wants to experience everything and she wants to learn everything about other people and cultures. Caroll starts a relationship with Martha, an American, but is she doing it for purely financial reasons or is she really in love? Martha is not the only one who wonders...

 

Fritt förfall is Birgitta Stenbergs first novel, written in 1952 but not published until 2006. The settings Birgitta Stenberg used in Love in Europe was already presented here. The novel is a future classic within homo litterature and it is not surprising no one dared to publish it in the 1950's. Falling Free seems bold even today.

 

148 pages

 

Rights sold

Sweden: Normal förlag