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Scribe has acquired A System So Magnificent it is Blinding, a novel by Amanda Svensson, the Swedish translator for Ali Smith and Tessa Hadley. 

Publisher Molly Slight acquired world English rights to the novel from Catherine Mörk of the Norstedts Agency. It has been translated by Nichola Smalley, translator of Andrzej Tichý’s Wretchedness (And Other Stories), which won the Oxford-Weidenfeld Prize and was longlisted for the 2021 International Booker Prize. A System So Magnificent it is Blinding will be published in July 2022. 

The novel won the Per Olov Enquist Literary Prize and the Svenska Dagbladet Literature Prize in Sweden, and is Svensson’s first novel to be translated into English. 

Described as an “exhilarating, careening” family saga, the novel tells the story of adult triplets living separate lives who are forced by a long-buried family secret to reunite. 

Slight said: “It is rare for me to sit and read a full manuscript in one go, but that is exactly what happened when translator Nichola Smalley sent me this brilliant novel by Swedish superstar Amanda Svensson. It is intriguing and intricate, genuinely exhilarating, and very, very funny. There is also a fascinating question at the heart of the book that I think we have all been wondering these past few strange years: are we free to create our own destinies or are we just part of a system beyond our control?”