Feminist autofiction from one of Sweden’s blazing talents.
“Ramqvist is a serious contender for the Swedish literary limelight.” —Shelf Awareness
Blending autofiction and essay, The Bear Woman is a journey of feminism and literary
detective work spanning centuries and continents. In the 1540s, a young
French noblewoman, Marguerite de la Rocque, was abandoned on an island in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence with her maidservant and her lover. In present-day
Stockholm, an author and mother becomes captivated by the image of Marguerite
sheltered in a dark cave after her companions have died.
This image soon becomes an obsession. She must find out the real story of the
woman she calls the Bear Woman. But so much in this history is written so as to gloss over male violence. And the maps and other sources she consults are at times undecipherable.
Karolina Ramqvist explores what it means to write history—and to live it.
