The Streets of Babylon
By (author) Carina Burman Translated by Sarah Death
Paperback (Published)
(May 2008)
ISBN: 9780714531380
5.24 x 10 inches
Price: $16.95
On back order
In London,1851, together with a Welsh police inspector, the successful Swedish authoress Euthanasia Bondeson goes in search of her beautiful companion, who has disappeared in the narrow streets and alleyways of London.
The setting is London in 1851, the year of the Great Exhibition. Together with a Welsh police inspector, the successful Swedish authoress Euthanasia Bondeson goes in search of her beautiful companion, who has disappeared in the narrow streets and alleyways of London.
She meets beggars and whores, artists and society beauties, all actors on the city stage in a drama of dark shadows and ever-changing desires. In this world where gender boundaries are constantly shifting, can we even tell who is a man and who is a woman?
With skirts flapping, Euthanasia forges her way through this romp of a crime novel, surveying the streets that Sherlock Holmes himself would not tread until a whole generation later.
Carina Burman (born 1960) is a Swedish novelist and literature scholar. Her research has been focused on Swedish 18th and 19th century literature. She completed her Ph.D. in literature in Uppsala in 1988 with a dissertation on the Gustavian writer Johan Henric Kellgren. Later production includes a critical edition of previously unpublished letters of the novelist and feminist pioneer Fredrika Bremer in two volumes (1996) and a biography of Bremer (2001).
Together with her husband, Professor Lars Burman, she has published critical editions on behalf of the Swedish Academy of the works of Johan Henric Kellgren (1995), Fredrika Bremer’s “Livet i gamla världen. Palestina” (1995) and the poetic works of Erik Gustaf Geijer (1999).[1] Carina and Lars Burman have also edited Bremer’s “Grannarne” for the series of Swedish literature published by Svenska Vitterhetssamfundet (2000).
Burman’s novels have historical motifs, often taking the form of a pastiche. Her first, “Min salig bror Jean Hendrich” (1993) deals with Johan Henric Kellgren from the point of view of his brother and his mistress in a series of letters. Her latest two novels, “Babylons gator” (2004) and “Vit som marmor” (2006) have the form of detective novels. “Babylons gator: Ett Londonmysterum” (The Streets of Babylon: A London Mystery), which borrows from English novels of the Victorian period, has Euthanasia Bondeson, a Swedish woman novelist-amateur sleuth visiting London, as its main character.[2] In “Vit som marmor” (White as marble), Euthanasia Bondeson travels to Rome and solves a murder mystery in the Scandinavian artist colony.[3]
- By (author) Carina Burman
- Translated by Sarah Death