JONAS BRUN (1979) is an acclaimed Swedish author, translator and neuropsychologist based in Stockholm. He made his literary debut in 2004 with the novel Another Time. His second novel, The Amphibian Heart, published in 2009, won the prestigious Mare Kandre Prize. In 2012 his novel, Shadowland, was awarded with Swedish Radio’s Novel Prize, further cementing his reputation as a distinctive voice on the Swedish literary scene. Brun is also a celebrated poet, with several poetry collections to his name.

In addition to his own writing, Brun is a successful translator from English to Swedish, and translates both drama and poetry, notably bringing Nobel Prize winner Louise Glück’s Averno and The Wild Iris, Frank O’Hara’s Lunch Poems and Matthew Lopez’s The Inheritance to Swedish.

Brun’s most recent novel She Doesn’t Remember, published in 2021 by Albert Bonnier, received widespread acclaim from readers and critics alike. The book is a deeply personal memoir about his mother’s battle with Alzheimer’s and intertwines Brun’s literary skill with his expertise as a neuropsychologist specializing in dementia assessments, offering a deeply human and layered perspective on memory, loss and love.

© HANNA KÄLLEBO NEIKTER

Reviews

“It certainly is a paradox, that trigger points, well even the feeling of God’s absence, can evoke something so beautiful and hopeful as this novel. But that’s the way it is with authorships that intensify; where the words are charged by increasingly great experience, presence and human gaze.”
– Svenska Dagbladet (SE)

“She Doesn’t Remember has everything; absurdity, warmth, emptiness, despair and love. […] I will carry this book with me for far longer than any other. It moves you deeply, and Brun’s portrayals  are deeply human.”
– Upsala Nya Tidning (SE)

“It is a compact, intense, almost claustrophobic story, but by shifting the chronology, Jonas Brun avoids leading the reader toward the inexorable end. Instead, through his own walk down memory lane, he brings his mother back piece by piece; he creates outlines of what she once was. It must be one of the most beautiful things a child can give to a lost parent, as well as what an author can give to a reader.”
– Tidningen Vi (SE)

“[A] bright portrayal of a mother’s journey through the darkness of forgetfulness.”
– Göteborgs-Posten (SE)

“In the midst of the dainty, the love, it becomes clear how merciless this disease is. The fact that he can, being a psychologist himself, describe how our memory works gives further bewildering dimensions to the text. And he finds both a form and a language for it all. […] His mother could not have been given a more tender memoir.”
– Sveriges Radio (SE)

“[…] with each sentence, the story moves closer to a healthier version of her […] until we see the outlines of a person who is more than her destiny. In many ways, it is a story about a loving relationship, or multiple ones, as well as a memoir and a collection of movements of one’s own creation.”
– Opulens (SE)

“[…] Jonas Brun’s literary, memoir-like portrayal [clenches] the reader with an iron grip.”
– Expressen (SE)

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