Author Catharina Ingelman-Sundberg in front of her personal book collection. Photo: Erik Nylander / TT
Each month, The Local Swedens Book Club reads a different book with a Swedish link. In June, were reading The Little Old Lady Who Broke all the Rules by Catharina Ingelman-Sundberg, a humorous novel about a group of fed-up Swedish seniors who break out of their care home to start a life of crime.
Our heroine is 79-year-old Martha Andersson, who lives in a Stockholm retirement home and is by no means ready to stop enjoying life.
So when new owners at the home introduce budget cuts, poor quality food, and impose limits on the amount of coffee the seniors can drink, Martha decides enough is enough. With a group of four friends, she creates The League of Pensioners, determined to stand up for elderly people everywhere, regain their freedom, and lead a life of luxury.
Their solution? Crime, or more specifically, a daring heist aimed at landing them in prison. The book follows the unlikely group on their adventures, which never quite go as planned.
Although the story is light-hearted, author Ingelman-Sundberg has said her inspiration for the novel was her own frustration at the lack of representation of older people in literature, and her perception that some Swedish elderly care homes offered worse living conditions than prisons, so there are serious issues at the book's heart.
We hope to host an event in Stockholm later in the month to discuss the book, so sign up to the newsletter in order to be among the first to hear the details.
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