The workshop discussion: Author Kristina Ohlsson loves the idyll - it can be destroyed so easily

Ms Ohlsson, you have a holiday home in Hovenäset, a fishing village on the Swedish west coast.

The workshop discussion: Author Kristina Ohlsson loves the idyll - it can be destroyed so easily

Ms Ohlsson, you have a holiday home in Hovenäset, a fishing village on the Swedish west coast. Is there a second-hand shop there? A small one, yes. It is run by the village community and financed with public money; people with intellectual disabilities work there. It's a wonderful shop. But very different from the one August Strindberg opened in the area...

... the hero of your new crime novel “The Fire in the Boathouse”. August Strindberg, an asset manager, moved from Stockholm to Hovenäset and opened a second-hand shop there - an interesting move. How did you come up with that? Well, we have to start with my relationship with Hovenäset: my grandparents owned a summer house there. When I was eight years old they sold it. I was the only one in our family – and my family is really big! – who cried when the house was sold. My five siblings, on the other hand, were happy that they no longer had to go to our elderly grandparents for the holidays, but I couldn't forget the house. I grew up, and when I was planning my summer at 30, I thought: Now I'm going back, this summer I'm going to Hovenäset! And I immediately fell in love with the place again.

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