Roll Up, Roll Up (Skynda, kom och se)

Lotta Lundberg

 

Roll Up, Roll Up is a tale about shame, about constantly being exposed and observed. But more than that, it is a gripping novel about friendship, about yearning for a life away from classifications, for a life of dignity.

The novel is set in three cities: New York, Berlin and Stockholm, and the time is the early 1930s. This page-turner is narrated from a unique perspective: the four main characters are dwarves.

Glauer and Ka work at Luna Park on Coney Island, New York. In the middle of the gaudy glitter and tawdry tinsel surrounding the cheap entertainment is the tiny town of Lilliputia, where the dwarves humiliate themselves in a series of tasteless antics, while next door in the House of Incubators, premature babies are displayed inside their glass cases.

Glauer, originally from Austria, longs to return to more civilised Europe, where he hopes to realise his dream of leading an ambitious theatre company. And Ka wants to go with him. She needs to escape from humiliating physical examinations, during which the secrets of her sex have been exposed and have aroused the interest of the scientists.

They work their way across the Atlantic on a ship, dressed up in Santa Claus costumes. In the shady corners of Berlin’s cabaret scene they meet other outcasts and outsiders and make friends with Nelly, who has permanent backache, and with Verner, the tiniest man on earth.

But it is 1933, Hitler is in power, and the euthanasia programme is being developed. Violence and fear make it impossible for them to stay. Along with another group of shabby circus dwarves, they only just make it to Stockholm. They have been invited to the amusement park there. Surely this must be a place of refuge...

395 sid

 

English reading material available. Translation by Sarah Death.

 

Rights sold

Denmark: Cicero

Finland: Gummerus

The Netherlands: De Geus

Norway: Epoke

Sweden: Albert Bonnier (hardcover), Pocketförlaget (paperback), Speaking books (audio book)

 

Reviews

”Lundberg has an exceptional ability to describe to innermost feelings of his protagonists – their ability to stand being different and outcasts. She is also a formidable critic of modern times, a latter day Dickens who puts up a mirror to cruelty…”

Helsingin Sanomat

 

"Roll Up, Roll Up (Skynda, kom och se) is about being able to exist entirely in your own right, with the added ingredient that the plot is set in one of the most difficult periods of time. In 1935, Glauer wants to finish his play, which is meant to cover up, to clothe all those who have been put on display, undressed and exhibited for others to gawk at. “While you’re writing, staring eyes don’t exist,” Glauer thinks – as does Lotta Lundberg, who has written a novel of resistance against those particular kinds of staring eyes."
SR P1 (radio)

 

“Now, she is not only an interesting author, she is significant as well.”

Dagens Nyheter

"Lotta Lundberg has created a big, broad novel/…/Lotta Lundberg has attempted a difficult balancing act. It must have been tempting to fall back on sarcasm, pity or indignation, but she succeeds admirably well in portraying these so exploited figures objectively and with respect. With purposeful energy she penetrates ever deeper into lives that we as readers can barely endure imagining."
Aftonbladet

"There is no room here to describe all 400 pages of the political adventure, or even all the exciting and sad events of the collective novel that finally concludes in Stockholm. I’ll just have to settle for applauding the way it was carried out. Respect! “

Expressen

"Lotta Lundberg succeeds in putting the pain that accompanies alienation into words. She depicts characters who, in the hope of belonging, are slowly and inevitably drawn into a thorny thicket of deceit, dissention and prejudice."
Helsingborgs dagblad

"Lotta Lundberg has previously written three novels. Those have been interesting. This one is much more than so. Roll up, Roll up is a story that helps us not only see but also realize that behind those of short stature, those who are fat, colored or handicapped, are people who we know nothing about and therefore should refrain from judging. And that is quite an accomplishment. "
Nerikes Allehanda

"It’s been quite a long time since I read such a strong novel by a Swedish author. Roll up, Roll up is well written, entertaining and appalling. Ms. Lundberg holds up a mirror of humorous language in which we eventually catch a glimpse of ourselves, our own intolerance. It’s not always a pleasant experience, but I think it’s a necessary one. Good art maneuvers us until our backs are up against the wall. "
Arbetarbladet

" She writes prose that is lovely, effusive and fairly romantic, the kind that you just can’t skim through, but which holds you in a firm, secure grasp once you’ve gotten into it. To use the phrase ‘separation anxiety’ might be taking it a bit too far, but it’s been quite some time I finished a book that built up such a large and so unceasingly fascinating distance between the world inside the covers of the book and the one outside."
Sydsvenskan

 

“Although the time and place is far from our own in Lotta Lundberg’s notable debut, it reveals a sad reality also present in modern Denmark. Tolerance for society’s outsiders, those who are not considered normal, has also reached a low point here, and so the book can be read as a critical commentary on contemporary society’s lack of tolerance.Nevertheless, Lundberg is seen as telling a great story more than being a hard-handed political commentator – but maybe that’s just what she is.”

Politikken (Danish daily newspaper)