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Skärmavbild 2023-09-19 kl. 10.08.51

Nicolas had experienced the deafening sound of gunshots before. He had stood nearby many times when a gun was fired and heard the metallic roar so sharp it felt as if it had physically struck him. But he had never before stared down the muzzle of a gun, until that fateful night in 2010. There he stood, with a sense of paralysis coursing through him, anticipating the moment when the shooter would inevitably squeeze the trigger. And then it happened. The deafening blast preceding the bullet, hurtling through the air with lethal intent. And it missed.

The summer of 2022 is an unusually violent time during an unusually violent decade in Swedish history. Children murder children in the streets of Malmö and among the community activists working with youths, no one is left untouched. Diary From the 2020’s consists of Nicolas Lunabba’s deeply personal and thoughtful reflections from those summer months. In addition to this, it is also a blistering catalogue of gang violence – and of our contemporary societal moment.

News of violence are plastered on the front pages every day, but what is it like to live with that violence close by? To be subjected to it? To subject others to it? Is the language we have at our disposal sufficient to voice the experience of a violent life – or does violence itself spring from a state of voicelessness?

With Diary From the 2020’s Nicolas Lunabba further cements his position as an intellectual and literary force, whose searing pen is as unmerciful toward himself as it is toward the structural failures of our society.

Paloma Agency is a boutique literary agency that represents Scandinavian writers at home and in the world.

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