Engagement

(Paperback)

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A feminist cult classic about love, independence and what it means to be an individual, translated into English for the first time 'I want to have him, I really do. I just don't want him to have me.' Martina and Gustav, students in 1970s Stockholm, meet and fall immediately into coupledom. But what is coupledom A route to marriage A declaration of co-dependency A new dimension of commitment and responsibility A sexual confrontation Or is it a habit that an intelligent person must consider breaking Martina and Gustav discuss their relationship endlessly, between themselves and with others, as they try to make it work. Engagement, set during a time of social change and political upheaval, sees Martina trying to engage with the world on her own terms. Unwilling to marry, she finds herself in a state of permanent engagement while her friends settle down to marriage and children; uncertain of the world's future, she engages with demos, sit-ins and philosophy seminars in her quest for a new blueprint for joy. First published in 1976, when it was heralded as an instant classic, Engagement remains as relevant, hilarious and heartbreaking today.

Reviews

A novel from which you never really recover. -- Victor Malm * Expressen *

Author Bio

Gun-Britt Sundstr m (Author) Gun-Britt Sundstr m (b.1945) works as an author, critic and translator. She is the author of sixteen books, including Engagement (1976). Since the 1990s, Gun-Britt Sundstr m has established herself as one of Sweden's foremost translators of children's books and fiction. She received the Helga Prize in 2019 for her 'linguistic sensitivity, self-distance, black humour and acuity'. Kathy Saranpa (Translator) Kathy Saranpa (b.1955) translates from Swedish and Finnish into English. Her first book-length translation was Ingrid and Joachim Wall's A Silenced Voice (2020). Engagement fulfils a lifelong dream of rendering Maken into English.