Shade and Breeze | by Quynh Tran
Shade and Breeze | by Quynh Tran
Translated from Swedish by Kira Josefsson
Winner of the Svenska Yle Literature Prize 2021
Winner of the Runeberg Prize 2022
Winner of the Borås Tidning’s Debutant Prize 2022
Shortlisted for the Katapult Prize 2022
Má dreams of wealth and grandeur, Hieu dreams of Finnish girls. The younger brother, always on the periphery, always an observer, gradually disappears into his schoolwork, mesmerised by his own intellect
The three of them form a solitary world in a small Ostrobothnian town on the west coast of Finland. Má and Hieu, constantly on a collision course with each other and the community’s suffocating social codes. They live among people who want to talk openly about everything, who don’t understand the necessity of sometimes remaining in the shade.
In sensitive and transfixing prose that has the effect of a series of tableaux, and with chapter headings reminiscent of the intertitles in a silent film, Tran’s multi-award-winning debut is a moving story about love, the compulsion to create, and the meaning of family.
Publication 25 October 2024
Description 185 × 125 mm, 259 pages, Softcover Original
ISBN 978-1-915267-28-3
Design Orin Bristow
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QUYNH TRAN (b. 1989) grew up in Jakobstad in Finnish Ostrobothnia and now resides in Malmö. A graduate of the acclaimed Biskops Arnö Writing School, Tran’s debut novel Shade and Breeze was awarded the prestigious Runeberg Prize, the Svenska Yle’s Literature Prize, and the Borås Tidning’s Debutant Prize.
KIRA JOSEFSSON is a writer, editor, and translator working between Swedish and English. Her work has been longlisted for the International Booker Prize and shortlisted for the Bernard Shaw Prize. She lives in Queens, New York, and regularly writes on US events and politics in the Swedish press.
Praise for Shade and Breeze
A magic voice. Working with the coming-of-age in a smalltown narrative Quynh Tran creates a world completely of its own kind, a story of belonging and estrangement, and of the refugee experience. In a sensual, dreamy prose, still so very real, with an authority reminiscent of Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, Tran has written a first novel that shines like a precious gem
– Monika Fagerholm, auther of Who Killed Bambi?
A perceptive debut, where the significant events are intentionally placed in the background, in line with the family’s wishes. Not everything should be discussed, claims the mother whose anger instead turns into a physical condition – a slap here and there. Nobody is capable of seeing how their actions cause a ripple effect, how human darkness is passed down through generations. In different ways, the family members try to find a mutual place where they can love one another. This makes Shade and Breeze a complex, delicate, and wistful debut. It deserves to be pulled into the light
– Sydsvenskan
Quynh Tran’s prose is vivid and cinematic, sensuous and full of images and descriptions that are both suggestive and alluring… An elegant and impressive debut
– Svenska Yle Literature Prize Jury