This GalleyCat editor couldn’t attend the 25th Annual Gothenburg (Göteborg) Book Fair, but author and GalleyCat correspondent Scott Andrew Selby will file dispatches from the four-day book fair with 2,100 speakers and nearly 900 exhibitors in Gothenburg, Sweden.
Today Selby writes: “Chief/Author Carina Brydling (pictured) was handing out small crackers from an old fashioned basket, she’d made them herself from her cookbook, ‘The Food I Love.’ The recipe was sweet knäckebröd with goat cheese. She mentioned that the book even has a recipe for bear, and explained that ‘it tastes just like moose.’
“Legendary Swedish mystery writer Henning Mankell (he’s sold over 30 million copies) spoke about his upcoming book ‘Like an Invisible Stone in my Heart’ with his co-author Neo Chitombo. Their book is about discrimination, stigmatization and HIV. Mankell told the audience that ‘the stigma itself can lead to death long before the disease does.'”
The book fair dispatch continued: “Mankell (pictured) spoke of an epidemic of HIV positive people in Africa drinking pesticides and going out to the sugar cane fields to die. He did not mince words, saying that ‘we are talking about terrible, horrible things.'”When asked by the event’s host (Marco Helles) about South Africa’s ex-president Thabo Mbeki, Mankell replied that it is ‘still a mystery why Mbeki acted like he did … millions died unnecessarily.’
“The Kvarnby comic book artists college in Malmö have a live pictionary-like game where students show off their artistic chops by drawing characters on an overhead projector for passersby to guess who they are. First year student Maria Wigelius drew Mega Man while her classmate Adrielle Farr guessed it to be RoboCop.”
The dispatch concluded: “Most of the book fair is open to the public. One young couple, Lisa and Jesper, traveled an hour to come here for the day. So far, they’ve had a great time and especially enjoyed the political and international aspects of the fair.”
Scott Andrew Selby is the co-author of “Flawless: Inside the Largest Diamond Heist in History”