Monika Fagerholm awarded with 2020 Nordic Council Literature Prize
Monika Fagerholm has been bestowed with the 2020 Nordic Council Literature Prize for her novel Who Killed Bambi? The prestigious accolade has been awarded since 1962 to a work of fiction written in one of the Nordic languages. The jury motivation was as follows:
“Monika Fagerholm’s Who Killed Bambi? is stylized morality written with a raging energy. A gang-rape is committed by affluent youths in the wealthy Villastaden just outside of Helsinki. Fagerholm’s focus lies not with the victim but the perpetrators and on what takes place before and after the rape. Particularly the parental generation’s strive to palliate afterwards gives her the opportunity to excel in impeccable social satire. The language heels forward, in turns gleaming with power or melancholically incantatory. In the novel’s tightly woven weave of dialogues, refrains and popular cultural references there’s a hard truth that affects the characters no matter how much they resist it. Gusten Grippe, the only perpetrator to acknowledge the guilt, becomes a counter force to the dark draw from the room where the assault took place. Against our superficial, status-craving times is pitched the longing for the unspoilt, a vital longing portrayed in the shape of recollections of love and friendship, moments one can return to and gather energy from.”
