{"id":918,"date":"2021-02-03T15:13:28","date_gmt":"2021-02-03T14:13:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lenaeinhorn.se\/english\/?page_id=918"},"modified":"2021-02-07T15:25:40","modified_gmt":"2021-02-07T14:25:40","slug":"blekingegatan-32-2013","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/lenaeinhorn.se\/english\/books\/blekingegatan-32-2013\/","title":{"rendered":"Blekingegatan 32 (2013)"},"content":{"rendered":"

[vc_row css_animation=”” row_type=”row” use_row_as_full_screen_section=”no” type=”grid” angled_section=”no” text_align=”left” background_image_as_pattern=”without_pattern” padding_top=”20″ z_index=”” padding_bottom=”20″][vc_column width=”2\/3″][vc_column_text]I thought I \u2019knew\u2019 Greta Garbo.\u201d This is how Lena Einhorn begins the epilogue of her novel Blekinge Street 32. At the end of the nineties, Einhorn had made a television documentary about Garbo and therefore had had reason to spend many hours with this inaccessible and \u2013 mostly \u2013 unhappy woman who was once the world\u2019s greatest movie star.<\/p>\n

But then, in 2005, Einhorn got to read the thirty-three letters from Greta Garbo to fellow actress Mimi Pollak. They hailed right back to Greta and Mimi\u2019s time as students at the Royal Drama School, and continued until long after the end of Greta\u2019s career. Mimi was said to have kept these letters in her purse through her entire life.<\/p>\n

And suddenly a completely different Greta Garbo emerged: a woman who had once had other choices in life, and who already felt she had achieved her dreams when suddenly a world-famous film director \u2013 Mauritz Stiller \u2013 came forward and explained to her that she could go further than that \u2013 much, much further\u2026<\/p>\n

The novel Blekingegatan 32 opens in 1920, in an impoverished home in the district of S\u00f6dermalm, in Stockholm. Greta has recently lost her father and works as a sales girl of hats at PUB, a major department store. But she longs to get away, fantasizes about another life. Aged seventeen, she manages to get in to the Royal Drama School as the youngest of all the school\u2019s students. We will follow this period in her life, which, later, she would describe as the happiest one she ever had. It was a time of well-being, friendship and, for the first time in Greta\u2019s young life, a sense of belonging. It was a time, also, of passionate love.<\/p>\n

But then, suddenly, a total change of scene is ushered in with the entrance of master director Mauritz Stiller. He lays the world at her feet, and at the same time pulls her away from the places and people she knows and loves.<\/p>\n

In 2014, Blekingegatan 32<\/em> was awarded the Garbo Prize.[\/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space]

\n\t

\n\n\t \n Press Voices <\/span>\n<\/span>\n\n \n <\/span>\n <\/span>\n <\/span>\n<\/span>\n<\/h4>\n
\n
\n [vc_column_text]\u201cAn effervescent story about the two years in Greta Garbo\u2019s life when she attended the acting school at Dramaten, and her meeting with Mimi Pollak who became one of her great loves. They seem so vivid, the main characters \u2013 Greta, Mimi and the great film director Mauritz Stiller (who discovered Garbo) \u2013 and the glimpses into the film and theatre world of the 1920s. This is a book that you devour at a single sitting.\u201d
\nJeanette Gentele, Svenska Dagbladet<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cLena Einhorn is a rarity in as much as she is an author who likes her characters and can make her readers like them too\u2026 Greta\u2019s two sides are described superbly, she was elusive and strong, frightened and weak at the same time. The discouraging precision in her words. Her fascinating shyness and capricious energy. The dialogue both has an everyday warmth and a very believable tone.\u201d
\nSven Olof Karlsson, Expressen<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cHer driving force is the delight she feels in telling the other story: the forbidden one, the one that generations of interpreters, film critics, reviewers and researchers have refused to touch or recognise\u2026 when Einhorn makes it her purpose to raise the curtain, it becomes easier for us others to understand both the person and the artiste Greta Gustafsson under the misanthropic surface \u2026 Blekingegatan 32 is a melancholic novel with stifled undertones. It is often a fantastic read.\u201d
\nUlrika K\u00e4rnborg, Aftonbladet<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cLena Einhorn has written a fictive biography about Greta Garbo that carries the whole way. The writing is magnificent and the novel is dense and very well worked through \u2026 Blekingegatan 32 is definitely one of the best books I have read in this genre. One gets a fantastic introduction to the Stockholm film and theater scene of that era, and learns a lot about the life of the actors, both on stage and in front of the camera. One also gets an entirely new feeling for the mysterious Greta Garbo. Lena Einhorn manages to bring her readers very close to her fictive main character, and when you put the book down, you can still feel the scent of fried herring from the apartment on the South, where Greta used to share the bed sofa in the minute kitchen with her sister Alva, and you understand a bit more of where the iconic Garbo had her roots, and why everything turned out the way it did.\u201d
\nElisabeth Br\u00e4nnstr\u00f6m, Tidningen Kulturen<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cLena Einhorn is really determined to get under the skin of Greta Garbo and portray a vulnerable person who also craves affection\u2026 What is so nice about a novel like Blekingegatan 32 is the interest it creates for Garbo\u2019s films. You feel like pulling the old classics down from the shelf to discover which secrets Mauritz Stiller \u2013 he is portrayed with unusual sensitivity in the book \u2013 and the other directors saw in Garbo\u2019s face.\u201d
\n\u00c5ke Leijonhufvud, Sydsvenskan<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cLena Einhorn\u2019s book about Garbo \u2013 Blekingegatan 32 \u2013 is brilliant! I would like to do a deep curtsy for a gifted author; it is an exciting, well written, very touching book\u2026 This is sterling romantic literature, a gift to be able to read! \u2026 This book gives me a feeling of joy, I\u2019m flying! How fantastic it is to be able to read a book by a talented writer who can really go all the way in her subject!\u201d
\nYvonne Gr\u00f6ning, Dala-Demokraten<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cThis novel really does get to you. And it stays behind long after you have stopped reading, long after Lena Einhorn\u2019s story is finished. Because when I have read Blekingegatan 32 from start to finish I google all the names in the book. I look at all the film clips I can find on YouTube. I have quite simply fallen in love with the young, forceful yet strangely submissive Greta Gustafsson\u2026 I hope this will be turned into a film some day. I hope we will be able to follow these young people at the acting school through a sparkling winter-Stockholm in the 1920s. Anybody at all must surely realise that this would be a magical film.\u201d
\nMinna Jonsson, Gefle Dagblad<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cReading this book is like watching a classic, and of course very sad, romantic film\u2026 And what I wouldn\u2019t have been able to imagine without Einhorn\u2019s help is Greta Garbo as radiantly in love. Crazy. With a touch of joy.\u201d
\nBodil Juggas, Arbetarbladet<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cThe young Greta Garbo comes to life in some utterly remarkable way\u2026 She [Einhorn] simply makes the tale of Sweden\u2019s foremost film star her very own \u2013 and her brilliant storytelling talent soon silences any possible protest.\u201d
\nJohan Fingal, J\u00f6nk\u00f6pingsposten<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cGarbo\u2019s time in Hollywood is by Lena Einhorn, in her novel Blekingegatan 32, depicted as the Guantanamo of film stars. It is horrific and outstanding, in the form of fiction, and Einhorn is masterly at creating a charged atmosphere \u2026
\nThere was once a human being underneath the misanthropic surface, and the wistful glimpses from Hollywood stand in stark contrast to that image of Greta. This is what lifts this tale from being a very good novel about the mysterious Garbo to being an absolutely outstanding one, about a creative and once joyous Greta.\u201d
\nMarianne Ekenbj\u00f6rn, Norrbottenskuriren<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cHer electrifying way of writing, and the material she works with, makes one breathlessly throw oneself from page to page.\u201d
\nInger Dahlman, Norrk\u00f6pings Tidningar<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cLena Einhorn makes a human being out of the myth \u2026 [Blekingegatan 32] is well written and sensitive, it penetrates under the surface, but with great respect for the real people.\u201d
\nCamilla Carnmo, Bor\u00e5s Tidning<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cI see a knot. And when I read Lena Einhorn\u2019s tale about Garbo I sense it so strongly as if it lay in my own hand. Here, Garbo is depicted in a way that is an artist\u2019s way of depicting someone. We don\u2019t know what is true and what is untrue. But we feel. A young person\u2019s desire to come into existence \u2026
\nA role demands its shell. If you remove the shell from a turtle, you see all that you do not wish to see. Flesh, blood, nerves. The shell of the turtle is the camouflage of the role. Perhaps Garbo mastered camouflaging to perfection. The horrific experiences of her own life rested under the shimmering shell. A Garbo knot. Waiting for the slash\u2026
\nPerhaps it is Lena Einhorn who has just drawn the sword. Exposing that which might just be.\u201d
\nGunilla R\u00f6\u00f6r (Actress and Professor of Acting), Tidningen Vi<\/em><\/p>\n

With great warmth and psychological credibility, Einhorn depicts a fragile,\u00a0affirmation-thirsty revanchist, who oscillates between hubris and feelings\u00a0of inferiority. \u00a0A woman who chooses to become \u201cthe Divine\u201d, to become\u00a0untouchable and eternally alone. \u00a0With only the memory left of \u00a0the one\u00a0intimacy that meant something.
\nYukiko Duke, Tidningen Vi<\/em><\/p>\n

Blekingegatan 32 is a book about dreams, about an extraordinary life \u2026 The\u00a0problem with good books is that they are almost impossible to put aside\u00a0before one has finished. They become quick reads. Then one goes back, and\u00a0reads again, and finds new angles. It is impossible not to be fascinated by\u00a0this story. The writer\u2019s voice keeps the reader totally enthralled.
\n\u00d6landsbladet<\/em><\/p>\n

Einhorn has written something magnificent. Read it!
\nUlrika Larsson, QX<\/em>[\/vc_column_text] <\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>[vc_empty_space][\/vc_column][vc_column width=”1\/3″][vc_single_image image=”1019″ img_size=”full” qode_css_animation=”element_from_right”][vc_column_text]Sweden (Norstedts)[\/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space][vc_single_image image=”1022″ img_size=”full” qode_css_animation=”element_from_right”][vc_column_text]Germany (Langenm\u00fclle)[\/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space][\/vc_column][\/vc_row]<\/p>\n<\/section>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[vc_row css_animation=”” row_type=”row” use_row_as_full_screen_section=”no” type=”grid” angled_section=”no” text_align=”left” background_image_as_pattern=”without_pattern” padding_top=”20″ z_index=”” padding_bottom=”20″][vc_column width=”2\/3″][vc_column_text]I thought I \u2019knew\u2019 Greta Garbo.\u201d This is how Lena Einhorn begins the epilogue of her novel Blekinge Street 32. 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