Camera

'Liffner's distillation of old evils and new insight is evocative, potent and memorable...her book is original, unsettling and quite brilliant' - Literary Review

Reminiscent of Louise Welsh's The Cutting Room, Camera also contains elements of Sinclairian psychogeography and... this narrative jigsaw shakes down in satisfying style

A skilfully designed crime story-quotes from letters and newspaper articles are intertwined with other narrative techniques in a remarkably daring but assured way

A vivid  and increasingly fascinating recreation of the past and is human dramas

Eva-Marie Liffner was born in Gothenburg, Sweden in 1957. After studying, among other things, archaeology and the history of ideas, she became a journalist, later deciding to write fiction. Her first novel, Camera, was awarded four Swedish literary prizes, among them the Flint Axe for the best historical crime novel of 2001. Imago, Liffner's second novel, was nominated for the August Prize 2003.

On her uncle Jacob's death Johanna discovers a mysterious box of photographs amongst his belongings. Inspired to investigate Jacob's early life in London, where he trained as a photographer, she uncovers a macabre history laced with scandal. 
 
In 1905, Jacob is apprenticed to Herbert Burrows who photographs the séances of the Theosophist Society. Among the members of the society is Reverend Charles Leadbetter, who also employs Burrows for an altogether more sinister task. Intrigued by the possibilities of photography, Leadbetter secretly uses young children in experiments to capture the soul on film as it leaves the body. When Leadbetter's scheme is discovered it leads to further deceit and murder. 
 
The true story is gradually pieced together from Johanna's research and Jacob's own account, leading to a chilling discovery in the Thames... 
 
Camera won The Swedish Detective Novel Academy Award for First Novel, the Poloni Prize for female crime writers and the Flint Axe prize for the best historical crime novel.

Eva-Marie Liffner

Esmé Olsen is, like her author, a woman whose powers of imagination and recall are considerable, not to say formidable... Every era, every episode is densely imagined and detailed

A slice of psychogeography... This is a story of broad horizons that brings together battlefield horrors, a touch of German Romanticism, and tales of the supernatural

A terrific novel... Atmospheric, clever and gripping

It is 1938. A corpse is found in a peat bog in Schleswig-Holstein, a tiny but hotly contested fragment of Europe's coastal landscape between Germany and Denmark. The body is that of a nineteenth-century soldier bent double underneath his coat - a disquieting reminder of old ferocious battles just when a new world war is about to begin. 
 
Three men - a Danish policeman, a young German-Jewish refugee and a German professor - venture out into the quagmire to find clues to the mummified soldier's identity. Soon afterwards, the professor disappears. 
 
It is the year 2000. Esmé Olsen, a cleaner in the Institute for Historical Studies in Copenhagen, stumbles upon documents concerning the find in the bog while cleaning up after a party. A quirky amateur historian, she can't resist 'borrowing' the documents to read. Thus begins a many-layered journey into the past, both real and imagined. Esmé's childhood, her relationship with her eccentric father, the particular opulence of 1960s American automobiles, a packet of letters to the writer J.D. Salinger, the young soldier's drunken rape and the discovery of the German professor's body down a well are subtly interwoven to create a multivalent tale of mystery, memory and remembrance.

Eva-Marie Liffner

Praise for Imago

Esmé Olsen is, like her author, a woman whose powers of imagination and recall are considerable, not to say formidable... Every era, every episode is densely imagined and detailed

A slice of psychogeography... This is a story of broad horizons that brings together battlefield horrors, a touch of German Romanticism, and tales of the supernatural

A terrific novel... Atmospheric, clever and gripping

Esmé Olsen is, like her author, a woman whose powers of imagination and recall are considerable, not to say formidable... Every era, every episode is densely imagined and detailed

A slice of psychogeography... This is a story of broad horizons that brings together battlefield horrors, a touch of German Romanticism, and tales of the supernatural

A terrific novel... Atmospheric, clever and gripping

Esmé Olsen is, like her author, a woman whose powers of imagination and recall are considerable, not to say formidable... Every era, every episode is densely imagined and detailed

A slice of psychogeography... This is a story of broad horizons that brings together battlefield horrors, a touch of German Romanticism, and tales of the supernatural

A terrific novel... Atmospheric, clever and gripping

Books by Eva-Marie Liffner

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