The Trilogy
Bruno K. Ӧijer

Translated by Victoria Häggblom and Bruno K. Öijer

ISBN 978-0-900575-04-4 | $20 | April 1, 2020

Bruno K. Öijer, bestselling author and fierce social critic, has reached an iconic status in Sweden. He broke through as a rebellious young poet in the early 1970s with a brash style that drew equally from rock music and the historical avant-garde. In the 1980s, Öijer became a performing artist, touring Sweden with a band and releasing a record. But in the 90s he startled Swedish literature returning to written poetry with the legendary trilogy of books – While the Poison Acts, The Lost Word, and The Fog of Everything – that together make up a powerful, mystical vision. The books became instant classics of modern Swedish poetry and have been translated into many languages. This is the first time all three books are published together in English translation.

“we were born
with an immense longing
through the window
of a rushing train
at night
you catch a glimpse
of the celestial handwriting
impossible to read
somewhere
in the winding weave
of glittering ink
lies the answer
to our lives”

PRAISE FOR BRUNO K. ӦIJER AND THE TRILOGY

Öijer reminds us that poetry is magic and intoxication but most of all this: that we can be hypnotically entranced by a voice that has transformed its experience into song and language. His poems burn like a flash of white magnesium in a dark world.

—Sydsvenska Dagbladet

It is as if he were surrounded by invisible beings, words and images that only he sees but which he then invokes for us. He is like an oracle.

—Dagens Nyheter

In his poems there is a religious possession, as if they were taken from occult books and alchemical treatises.

—Månadsjournalen

Easily the most entrancing poet I have read since Tranströmer.

—Lars Gustafsson

If the poems in The Trilogy are poems about hauntings and journeys to the afterworld, they are also poems of and about transformation, and therefore about translation on a very profound level…. Perhaps only an occult book, a book of spells, can manage to move in so many temporal and spatial directions. The Trilogy is a magnificent example of a book that reads the world’s magic toys, with the magic toy of poetry.

—Johannes Göransson

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Bruno K. Öijer, bestselling author and fierce social critic, has reached an iconic status in Sweden. He broke through as a rebellious young poet in the early 1970s with a brash style that drew equally from rock music and the historical avant-garde. In the 1980s, Öijer became a performing artist, touring Sweden with a band and releasing a record. In the 1990s he startled Swedish literature returning to written poetry with the legendary trilogy of books  – While the Poison Acts, The Lost Word, and The Fog of Everything – that together make up a powerful, mystical vision. The books became instant classics of modern Swedish poetry.

ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR

Victoria Häggblom is a fiction writer and translator of Swedish living in the Bay Area. She has an MFA in creative writing from Columbia University.