Sigrid Combüchen (born 16 January 1942) is a Swedish novelist, essayist, literary critic and journalist.

Career

Sigrid Combüchen was born in

Solingen Solingen (; li, Solich) is a city in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It is located some 25 km east of Düsseldorf along the northern edge of the region called Bergisches Land, south of the Ruhr area, and, with a 2009 population of 161,366 ...

, Germany in the Ruhr territory. Shortly after the War her family moved to Sweden. Sigrid Combüchen made her debut at the age of eighteen with the novel (1960). She worked in journalism and on her academic degree before she returned to fiction seventeen years later with the novel (In Northern Europe) and then (Warmth) in 1980. Her first internationally renowned novel is ''Byron'', published in 1988. The book paints a picture of the English poet through a compositional change between present and past, where Byron is partly illustrated by a group of Byron enthusiasts of today and partly through the environment in his own time. It was translated into other languages including English, German, French, Spanish and Dutch the following years. Over a period of twenty years Combüchen has written three novels studying the change of mentality in national life. She has used themes of saga, as well as fantasy in i.e. (1998), a dystopian novel drawing on the medieval story. Her novel (Scraps. A Lady's novel) 2010, was translated into many languages and awarded several prizes, most importantly the Swedish August Prize for best novel of the year. Her latest novel (2017) is a story of two French refugees surviving in the Swedish countryside during 1944–45. It is soon to be presented in a stage version. She has also written a few biographies, among them an essayistic account of the life and work of Knut Hamsun. She was one of the editors of the magazine for a number of years and has been a contributor to several other literary magazines and to several newspapers on a regular basis. Between 2004 and 2017 she was a teacher of creative writing at Lund University. She has served on several boards and committees in Swedish, as well as Nordic literary and academic organisations.

Awards

She received the 2004

Selma Lagerlöf Prize The Selma Lagerlöf Prize is a Swedish literary prize awarded to an author writing in the spirit of Selma Lagerlöf who was the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. The prize was founded by the Sunne Municipality in 1983 and has been ...

and in 2007 she received an Honorary Doctorate in Literature at

Lund University , motto = Ad utrumque , mottoeng = Prepared for both , established = , type = Public research university , budget = SEK 9 billion Sigrid Combüchen
'' Store norske leksikon'', retrieved 27 April 2013

Bibliography

*, 1960 *, 1977 *, 1980 *''Byron'', 1988 *, 1992 *, 1995 *, 1998 *, 2003 *, 2006 *'' Spill: En damroman'', 2010 * , 2014 * , 2017

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Combuchen, Sigrid 1942 births Living people 20th-century Swedish novelists 21st-century Swedish novelists 21st-century Swedish writers Swedish literary critics Swedish women literary critics Selma Lagerlöf Prize winners Dobloug Prize winners August Prize winners Swedish women writers Swedish women novelists Swedish essayists Swedish women essayists Swedish women biographers Swedish journalists Swedish women journalists Swedish biographers