Elisabeth Katherine Åsbrink (born 29 April 1965) is a

Swedish Swedish or ' may refer to: Anything from or related to Sweden, a country in Northern Europe. Or, specifically: * Swedish language, a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Sweden and Finland ** Swedish alphabet, the official alphabet used by ...

author and journalist.

Life

Åsbrink made her debut with the book ''Smärtpunkten - Lars Norén, pjäsen Sju tre och morden i Malexander''. The book was nominated for the August prize for non-fiction in 2009, and is translated into Polish. In August 2011 she released the book ''Och i Wienerwald står träden kvar'' based on 500 letters written to a young boy from his family in

Vienna en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...

after he had fled to Sweden in 1939 as a refugee from the Nazis. The book received a lot of attention as it revealed new information about

IKEA IKEA (; ) is a Dutch multinational conglomerate based in the Netherlands that designs and sells , kitchen appliances, decoration, home accessories, and various other goods and home services. Started in 1943 by Ingvar Kamprad, IKEA has been t ...

founder

Ingvar Kamprad Feodor Ingvar Kamprad (; 30 March 1926 – 27 January 2018) was a Swedish billionaire best known for founding IKEA, a multinational retail company specialising in furniture. He lived in Switzerland from 1976 to 2014. Early life and family ...

that he had been placed under surveillance by the security police. In 1943 the police created a dossier on him under the heading "Nazi". The book also revealed that in an interview Åsbrink made with Kamprad in 2010 he said that he had been loyal to the Swedish fascist leader

Per Engdahl Per Claes Sven Edvard Engdahl (25 February 1909 – 4 May 1994) was a leading Swedish far-right politician. He was a leader of '' Sveriges Fascistiska Kamporganisation'' (SFKO or Sweden's Fascist Action Organization), during the 1930s. Born in ...

. Asbrink won the August prize for best non-fiction in 2011 for ''Och i Wienerwald står träden kvar'', the Danish-Swedish Cultural Foundations annual Culture Prize 2013 and in May 2014 she received the

Ryszard Kapuściński Award The Ryszard Kapuściński Award ( pl, Nagroda im. Ryszarda Kapuścińskiego) is a major annual Polish international literary prize, the most important distinction in the genre of literary reportage. History The award was founded to celebrate and ...

in Warsaw. The book was translated into English by

Saskia Vogel Saskia Maria Desiree Vogel (born September 17, 1981) is an American author and translator. ''Permission'', her debut novel, was published in English, Spanish, Italian, and Swedish in 2019 and has been optioned for television. She has translated ...

as ''And In the Vienna Woods The Trees Remain'' (2020). It has also been translated into German, Dutch, Polish, Danish, Norwegian, Slovakian, Czech and Estonian. In 2012 she debuted as a playwright with the play "RÄLS", based on the authentic minutes from a meeting convened by

Hermann Göring Hermann Wilhelm Göring (or Goering; ; 12 January 1893 – 15 October 1946) was a German politician, military leader and convicted war criminal. He was one of the most powerful figures in the Nazi Party, which ruled Germany from 1933 to 1 ...

in 1938, and interviews with child refugees from

Nazi Germany Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...

. This was followed by the plays ''Pojken och Det Sjungande Trädet'' and ''Dr Alzheimer''. On 13 July 2010, Åsbrink was the host of the radio show

Sommar i P1 ''Sommar i P1'' (''Summer on P1'') is one of the most popular shows on Swedish radio. It has been broadcast every summer since 29June 1959, originally as ''Sommar'' on P3 and since 1993 on P1. About Each 90-minute-long programme in the series ...

on Swedish Public Radio,

Sveriges Radio Sveriges Radio AB (, "Sweden's Radio") is Sweden's national publicly funded radio broadcaster. Sveriges Radio is a public limited company, owned by an independent foundation, previously funded through a licensing fee, the level of which is d ...

. In 2016, Åsbrink published the non-fiction title ''1947'', which was nominated for the August Prize in that year. This biography of a year has been published in many other languages, including English (as ''1947: When Now Begins'', translated by Fiona Graham and published by Scribe in the UK and by Other Press in the US and Canada). Her latest book, ''Made in Sweden: 25 ideas that created a country'', was published in Australia by Scribe in 2019.

References

External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Asbrink, Elisabeth Living people 1965 births 20th-century Swedish journalists Swedish women journalists