Quebec will be the guest of honor at the Gothenburg Book Fair, Sweden, in 2026. The Minister of Culture, Mathieu Lacombe, made the announcement Thursday in Gatineau.
For Frida Edman, general director of the Göteberg Fair, the event will be an opportunity to interest as many Swedish publishers as possible in Quebec literature. “You are a province with a rich literary tradition. Also, we have things in common, she said, while she was in Quebec this week. Nature is very present in your books and in ours. We also share an experience of oral tradition with the First Nations. In Sweden we have an indigenous people, the Sami.”
“Currently, Kim Thúy and Lise Tremblay have achieved great critical influence in Sweden,” ANEL said in a press release announcing the news. “Kim Thúy is also very popular with the public. Other authors from here have recently been translated into Swedish: Dominique Fortier, Catherine Mavrikakis, Jocelyne Saucier, Larry Tremblay, but the fact remains that in literature, for example, Naomi Fontaine, Michel Jean and Christian Guay -Poliquin which are translated into several important languages (German, English, Spanish) are still not translated into Swedish”.
Although it offers opportunities for legal exchanges, the Gothenburg Fair is above all a fair aimed at the general public. Its program includes some 300 seminars where authors from around the world discuss crucial topics such as climate change, continues Frida Edman. The legal exchanges taking place there are also very important for the Nordic market.
ANEL adds that “the fair is the largest cultural event in the Nordic region and one of the most important book fairs in Europe, with more than 80,000 visitors, more than 800 exhibitors and 300 seminars.”