The Angel House — Kerstin Ekman

The Angel House is the third novel in the celebrated Swedish novelist Kerstin Ekman's popular quartet of novels she wrote between 1974 and 1983. The women are now free from the hard physical tasks of the earlier novels, but no less trapped in the grinding repetition of factory jobs, repressive unions, and domestic chores in the isolation of their new homes. A male hierarchy still dominates the town; time is ruled by financial imperatives, council chairman's gavels, factory whistles, and military orders. She sets the remnants of a more organic timescale, governed by the slow evolution of women's bodies, the nurture of informal networks, and the unhurried cycles of trees and fruit bushes in old gardens. Winner of the Bernard Shaw Prize for Swedish Translation in 2003 (given every three years).